Galaxy v20n01 (1961 10)

Galaxy

MAGAZINE

OCTOBER 1961 50 ?

K

(Ci .

ru a
Si PLANET
NAMED
V SHAYOL

BY

CORDWAINER

SMITH

Q ARCTURUS
0 TIMES
™ THREE

BY

JACK

O; SHARKEY

BEAT

CLUSTER

BY

FRITZ

LEIBER

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OCTOBER, 1961 QAlaxy

VOL 20, NO. 1

MAGAZINE

CONTENTS

NOVELLAS

A PLANT NAMED SHAYOL
ARCTURUS TIMES THREE

NOVELETTES

THE ABOMINABLE EARTHMAN
THE SPY IN THE ELEVATOR

SHORT STORIES

CRIME MACHINE
AMATEUR IN CHANCERY

MATING CALL

THE BEAT CLUSTER

SCIENCE DEPARTMENT

FEATURES

HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?
FORECAST

GALAXY'S FIVE STAR SHELF

by Cordwainer Smith 8
by Jack Sharkey 122

by Frederik Pohl 68

by Donald E. Westlake 178

by Robert Bloch 47
by George O. Smith 54
by Frank Herbert 107
by Fritz Leiber 158

by Willy Ley 92

5

172

by Floyd C. Gale 173

FOR YOUR INFORMATION

The Man Made Land

Cover by FINLAY, illustrating The Beat Cluster

ROBERT M. GUINN, Publisher H. L. GOLD, Editor

SAM RUVIDICH, Art Director WILLY LEY, Science Editor

FREDERIK POHL, Managing Editor

GALAXY MAGAZINE is published bi-monthly by Galaxy Publishing Corporation. Main offices:
421 Hudson Street, New York 14, N. Y. 50< per copy. Subscription: (6 copies) $2.50 per
year in the United States, Canada, Mexico, South and Central America and U. S. Possessions.
Elsewhere $3.50. Second-class postage paid at New York, N. Y. and Holyoke, Mass. Copyright,
New York 1961, by Galaxy Publishing Corporation, Robert M. Guinn, President. All rights, in-
cluding translations reserved. All material submitted must be accompanied by self-addressed
stamped envelopes. The publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited material. All stories
printed in this magazine are fiction, and any similarity between characters and actual persons
is coincidental.

Printed in the U.S.A. by The Guinn Co., Inc. N. Y.

Title Reg. U.S. Pat. Off.

HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?

T ET’s think about education for
a while. How much do we
need? And what do we need it
for?

By the age of thirteen or four-
teen a child is supposed to have
learned a few simple arts and
skills — the rudiments of geogra-
phy, as much simple arithmetic as
he will ever need and a beginning
in algebra; English, grammar and
spelling sufficient to write a let-
ter or read a mass-circulation
magazine; and a smattering of
other odds and ends.

At eighteen, leaving high
school, he will have added a half-
baked acquaintance with the less
useful forms of another language;
and a few excursions into geom-
etry and intermediate algebra. He
will perform experiments involv-
ing most of the simpler discover-
ies of 19th century science. He
will have tasted the less contro-
versial delights of literature, and
memorized enough historical
dates to understand, at least, what
the major holidays commemorate.

Four college years later, his
bachelor’s degree in his hand, he
will be presumed to have “com-
pleted” his education ... in every
respect save one.

If he is to be a chemist, he
will have learned as much about
French essays as he will ever be
required to know.

If he is to be a teacher of social
studies, he will have completed
his learning of mathematics.

He will, in short, have learned
all he needs to know — about
every subject about which he
really needs to know nothing. It
is in the next two, four or ten
years — whether in school or serv-
ing his apprenticeship outside of
school — that he will at last learn
his own work.

It is in this “post graduate”
period that the chemist learns
chemistry and the social studies
teacher learns what the Lynds
were up to when they wrote Mid-
dletown.

In any branch of learning, then,
in which a body of knowledge al-
ready exists, the practitioner is in
his thirties before he really knows
what can be taught him. And
what can be “taught”? He knows
what Michelson did in 1887. But
he doesn’t know what Fred Hoyle
is doing in 1961. He knows what
Galileo deduced about gravita-
tion and mass in 1591, but he
doesn’t know what some isolated

5

worker has just learned this week.
Only dead knowledge is en-
tombed in texts. For what is going
on now, where the work is to be
done, only day-by-day continuing
study can keep a man abreast of
his own field.

TT is a two-headed problem, you
see.

Head one: Too much time is
spent learning what isn’t needed.
(Not needed the job, anyway.
Naturally the more everyone
knows about everything, the more
understanding we’ll have in the
world. The question is really how
much of a price we are willing to
pay to have a “well-rounded” pop-
ulation.)

Head two: There is too much
information in every area for any
one person to digest.

There is a solution at least to
the problem propounded by the
second head. Algis Budrys once
wrote a story in which people
kept their memories in little com-
puter-storage boxes which they
carried around with them. Want
to know Uncle Charlie’s birthday?
Plug in the appropriate area of
the little black box, and the stored
information comes promptly to
mind.

Well, the story is fiction, of
course. We don’t have any such
little black box on the market.

Do we?

What Budrys was suggesting

was an idea, not a box. Maybe, af-
ter all, we’re not so far from the
idea. Data is now being made
available in highly compressed
form. 10,000 pages of French
atomic-energy data is to be had
by anyone with the price in the
form of a batch of microcards not
much larger than a canasta deck.
They can be flicked out by sorters
without much difficulty by simple
edge-coding. You don’t read
French? No problem. Machine
translation of foreign languages is
already a practical reality. (An
awkward, unpolished, idiosyncra-
tic reality — “Le chat est noir” is
likely to come out “The/this cat-
masculine (is?) black/blackly” —
but a reality all the same.)

It is a question of accessibility.
The most accessible place for in-
formation is right in the front of
your own brain — “at the tip of
your fingers,” as we say — but
surely an acceptable second-best
would be to have it really “at the
tips of your fingers” — i.e., at the
other end of a computerized tele-
type setup.

It would be a pretty big box to
carry around, but it can be built:
A computer, linked with sufficient
storage capacity (which doesn’t
have to be in one place; Interna-
tional Tel & Tel will gladly give
you a circuit from almost any-
where to almost everywhere), so
that the man working on the
angular momentum of galaxies in

6

GALAXY

Pasadena can get the latest spec-
troscopic data from France, Eng-
land, Australia and Capetown
simply by pushing the combina-
tion of buttons that translates as:
“Galaxies, spectroscopic, internal
Doppler shifts of.”

A ND what about the other head
of the problem? What about
the task of merely acquiring a
basis of embalmed knowledge —
i.e., “education?”

There’s no doubt, as we said,
that knowledge is a desideratum.
But there are kinds and kinds of
knowledge. It isn’t going to help
a layman (won’t for that matter
even help a mathematician par-
ticularly!) to know that the six
millionth prime number is 104,-
395,289. Surely it is enough for
him to know a few simple rules:
that the distribution of primes is
such that in the first hundred mil-
lion integers about one out of
twenty is a prime; or to know, if a
number like 104,395,281 comes
up, that it is not a prime. (All he
has to know is the simple rule
that if the sum of the digits in a
number is divisible by three, the
number itself is divisible by three,
and thus by definition not a
prime.)

By the same token, it isn’t par-
ticularly important to memorize
the date of the Battle of New Or-
leans or the signing of the Eman-
cipation Proclamation. The se-

quence of events surrounding
each of these occasions may be
worth remembering: for New Or-
leans, because it occurred after
the War of 1812, of which it was
a part, was actually over (the
Treaty of Ghent had been signed,
but the combatants didn’t know
about it); for the Emancipation
Proclamation, because its timing
offers an interesting and useful
glimpse into the thinking of one
of our greatest presidents (it
waited on the Union victory at
Antietam, because Lincoln, a mas-
ter politician, held it up until a
Northern victory would give it
extra meaning.)

Actually, a good answer to
most school test questions would
be: “I can look it up for you, if
you want me to.” Unfortunately,
that’s not a passing answer!

But perhaps it isn’t the answer
that’s wrong; perhaps it’s the sys-
tem of examining on details in-
stead of on understanding.

What’s the answer to the prob-
lem of education? Well, it’s not
the business of a science-fiction
magazine to say. We supply ques-
tions, not answers. Hugo Gerns-
back says that that’s the hard
part of the creative process: It’s
easy to work out the answers,
once the questions are known.

Well, let’s work on these for a
while!

—THE EDITOR

7

A

PLANET

NAMiP

He had committed the most
dreadful of crimes —
but what sort of punishment
was this ,

when even his jailers
pitied him?

Illustrated by FINLAY

HERE was a tremendous

difference between the

liner and the ferry in
Mercer’s treatment. On the liner,
the attendants made gibes when
they brought him his food.

“Scream good and loud,” said
one rat-faced steward, “and then
we’ll know it’s you when they
broadcast the sounds of punish-
ment on the Emperor’s birth-
day.”

The other, fat steward ran the
tip of his wet red tongue over
his thick purple-red lips one
time and said, “Stands to reason,
man. If you hurt all the time,
the whole lot of you would die.
Something pretty good must
happen, along with the — what-
chamacallit. Maybe you turn in-

By CORDWAINER SMITH

A PLANET NAMED SHAYOL

9

to a woman. Maybe you turn
into two people. Listen, cousin,
if it’s real crazy fun, let me
know. . . .” Mercer said nothing.
Mercer had enough troubles of
his own not to wonder about the
daydreams of nasty men.

At the ferry it was different.
The biopharmaceutical staff was
deft, impersonal, quick in remov-
ing his shackles. They took off
all his prison clothes and left
them on the liner. When he
boarded the ferry, naked, they
looked him over as if he were
a rare plant or a body on the
operating table. They were al-
most kind in the clinical deftness
of their touch. They did not
treat him as a criminal, but as
a specimen.

Men and women, clad in their
medical smocks, they looked at
him as though he were already
dead.

He tried to speak. A man,
older and more authoritative
than the others, said firmly and
clearly, “Do not worry about
talking. I will talk to you myself
in a very little time. What
we are having now are the pre-
liminaries, to determine your
physical condition. Turn around,
please.”

Mercer turned around. An or-
derly rubbed his back with a
very strong antiseptic.

“This is going to sting,” said
one of the technicians, “but it

is nothing serious or painful. We
are determining the toughness of
the different layers of your
skin.”

Mercer, annoyed by this im-
personal approach, spoke up just
as a sharp little sting burned him
above the sixth lumbar vertebra.
“Don’t you know who I am?”
“Of course we know who you
are,” said a woman’s voice. “We
have it all in a file in the corner.
The chief doctor will talk about
your crime later, if you want to
talk about it. Keep quiet now.
We are making a skin test, and
you will feel much better if you
do not make us prolong it.”
Honesty forced her to add
another sentence: “And we will
get better results as well.”

They had lost no time at all
in getting to work.

He peered at them sidewise to
look at them. There was nothing
about them to indicate that they
were human devils in the ante-
chambers of hell itself. Nothing
was there to indicate that this
was the satellite of Shayol, the
final and uttermost place of
chastisement and shame. They
looked like medical people from
his life before he committed the
crime without a name.

They changed from one rou-
tine to another. A woman, wear-
ing a surgical mask, waved her
hand at a white table.

“Climb up on that, please.”

10

GALAXY

No one had said “please” to
Mercer since the guards had
seized him at the edge of the
palace. He started to obey her
and then he saw that there were
padded handcuffs at the head of
the table. He stopped.

“Get along, please,” she de-
manded. Two or three of the
others turned around to look at
both of them.

The second “please” shook
him. He had to speak. These
were people, and he was a per-
son again. He felt his voice ris-
ing, almost cracking into shrill-
ness as he asked her, “Please
ma’am, is the punishment going
to begin?”

46 f TVHERE’S no punishment
here,” said the woman.
“This is the satellite. Get on the
table. We’re going to give you
your first skin-toughening before
you talk to the head doctor.
Then you can tell him all about
your crime — ”

“You know my crime?” he
said, greeting it almost like a
neighbor.

“Of course not,” said she, “but
all the people who come through
here are believed to have com-
mitted crimes. Somebody thinks
so or they wouldn’t be here.
Most of them want to talk about
their personal crimes. But don’t
slow me down. I’m a skin tech-
nician, and down on the surface

of Shayol you’re going to need
the very best work that any of
us can do for you. Now get on
that table. And when you are
ready to talk to the chief you’ll
have something to talk about
beside your crime.”

He complied.

Another masked person, prob-
ably a girl, took his hands in
cool, gentle fingers and fitted
them to the padded cuffs in a
way he had never sensed before.
By now he thought he knew every
interrogation machine in the
whole empire, but this was noth-
ing like any of them.

The orderly stepped back.
“All clear, sir and doctor.”

“Which do you prefer?” said
the skin technician. “A great
deal of pain or a couple of
hour’s unconsciousness?”

“Why should I want pain?”
said Mercer.

“Some specimens do,” said the
technician, “by the time they ar-
rive here. I suppose it depends
on what people have done to
them before they got here. I
take it you did not get any of
the dream-punishments.”

“No,” said Mercer. “I missed
those.” He thought to himself, I
didn’t know that I missed any-
thing at all.

He remembered his last trial,
himself wired and plugged in to
the witness stand. The room had
been high and dark. Bright blue

A PLANET NAMED SHAYOL

11

light shone on the panel of
judges, their judicial caps a fan-
tastic parody of the episcopal
mitres of long, long ago. The
judges were talking, but he
could not hear them. Momen-
tarily the insulation slipped and
he heard one of them say, “Look
at that white, devilish face. A
man like that is guilty of every-
thing. I vote for Pain Terminal.”
“Not Planet Shayol?” said a sec-
ond voice. “The dromozoa
place,” said a third voice. “That
should suit him,” said the first
voice. One of the judicial engi-
neers must then have noticed
that the prisoner was listening
illegally. He was cut off. Mercer
then thought that he had gone
through everything which the
cruelty and intelligence of man-
kind could devise.

But this woman said he had
missed the dream-punishments.
Could there be people in the
universe even worse off than
himself? There must be a lot of
people down on Shayol. They
never came back.

He was going to be one of
them; would they boast to him
of what they had done, before
they were made to come to this
place?

“You asked for it,” said the
woman technician. “It is just an
ordinary anesthetic. Don’t panic
when you awaken. Your skin is
going to be thickened and

strengthened chemically and bio-
logically.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Of course,” said she. “But get
this out of your head. We’re not
punishing you. The pain here is
just ordinary medical pain. Any-
body might get it if they needed
a lot of surgery. The punish-
ment, if that’s what you want to
call it, is down on Shayol. Our
only job is to make sure that
you are fit to survive after you
are landed. In a way, we are
saving your life ahead of time.
You can be grateful for that if
you want to be. Meanwhile, you
will save yourself a lot of
trouble if you realize that your
nerve endings will all respond to
the change in the skin. You had
better expect to be very uncom-
fortable when you recover. But
then, we can help that, too.” She
brought down an enormous lever
and Mercer blacked out.

HEN he came to, he was
in an ordinary hospital
room, but he did not notice it.
He seemed bedded in fire. He
lifted his hand to see if there
were flames on it. It looked the
way it always had, except that
it was a little red and a little
swollen. He tried to turn in the
bed. The fire became a scorch-
ing blast which stopped him in
mid-turn. Uncontrollably, he
moaned.

12

GALAXY

A voice spoke, “You are ready
for some pain-killer.”

It was a girl nurse. “Hold your
head still,” she said, “and I will
give you half an amp of pleasure.
Your skin won’t bother you
then.”

She slipped a soft cap on his
head. It looked like metal but
it felt like silk.

He had to dig his fingernails
into his palms to keep from
threshing about on the bed.

“Scream if you want to,” she
said. “A lot of them do. It will
just be a minute or two before
the cap finds the right lobe in
your brain.”

She stepped to the corner and
did something which he could
not see.

There was the flick of a
switch.

The fire did not vanish from
his skin. He still felt it; but
suddenly it did not matter. His
mind was full of delicious pleas-
ure which throbbed outward
from his head and seemed to
pulse down through his nerves.
He had visited the pleasure
palaces, but he had never felt
anything like this before.

He wanted to thank the girl,
and he twisted around in the
bed to see her. He could feel his
whole body flash with pain as he
did so, but the pain was far
away. And the pulsating pleas-
ure which coursed out of his

head, down his spinal cord and
into his nerves was so intense
that the pain got through only
as a remote, unimportant signal.

She was standing very still in
the corner.

“Thank you, nurse,” said he.

She said nothing.

He looked more closely,
though it was hard to look
while enormous pleasure pulsed
through his body like a sym-
phony written in nerve-messages.
He focused his eyes on her and
saw that she too wore a soft
metallic cap.

He pointed at it.

She blushed all the way down
to her throat.

She spoke dreamily, “You
looked like a nice man to me.
I didn’t think you’d tell on
me. . .”

He gave her what he thought
was a friendly smile, but with
the pain in his skin and the
pleasure bursting out of his
head, he really had no idea of
what his actual expression might
be. “It’s against the law,” he
said. “It’s terribly against the
law. But it is nice.”

“How do you think we stand
it here?” said the nurse. “You
specimens come in here talking
like ordinary people and then
you go down to Shayol. Terrible
things happen to you on Shayol.
Then the surface station sends
up parts of you, over and over

A PLANET NAMED SHAYOL

13

again. I may see your head ten
times, quick-frozen and ready
for cutting up, before my two
years are up. You prisoners
ought to know how we suffer,”
she crooned, the pleasure-charge
still keeping her relaxed and
happy, “you ought to die as soon
as you get down there and not
pester us with your torments.
We can hear you screaming, you
know. You keep on sounding
like people even after Shayol be-
gins to work on you. Why do
you do it, Mr. Specimen?” She
giggled sillily. “You hurt our
feelings so. No wonder a girl like
me has to have a little jolt now
and then. It’s real, real dreamy
and I don’t mind getting you
ready to go down on Shayol.”
She staggered over to his bed.
“Pull this cap off me, will you?
I haven’t got enough will power
left to raise my hands.”

ll/TERCER saw his hand trem-
ble as he reached for the

cap.

His fingers touched the girl’s
soft hair through the cap. As he
tried to get his thumb under
the edge of the cap, in order to
pull it off, he realized that this
was the loveliest girl he had
ever touched. He felt that he
had always loved her, that he al-
ways would. He cap came off.
She stood erect, staggering a
little before she found a chair to

hold to. She closed her eyes and
breathed deeply.

“Just a minute,” she said in
her normal voice. “I’ll be with
you in just a minute. The only
time I can get a jolt of this is
when one of you visitors gets a
dose to get over the skin
trouble.”

She turned to the room mirror
to adjust her hair. Speaking with
her back to him, she said, “I
hope I didn’t say anything about
downstairs.”

Mercer still had the cap on.
He loved this beautiful girl who
had put it on him. He was ready
to weep at the thought that she
had had the same kind of pleas-
ure which he still enjoyed. Not
for the world would he say any-
thing which could hurt her feel-
ings. He was sure she wanted to
be told that she had not said
anything about “downstairs” —
probably shop talk for the sur-
face of Shayol — so he assured
her warmly, “You said nothing.
Nothing at all.”

She came over to the bed,
leaned, kissed him on the lips.
The kiss was as far away as the
pain; he felt nothing; the Ni-
agara of throbbing pleasure
which poured through his head
left no room for more sensation.
But he liked the friendliness of
it. A grim, sane corner of his
mind whispered to him that this
was probably the last time he

14

GALAXY

would ever kiss a woman, but it
did not seem to matter.

With skilled fingers she ad-
justed the cap on his head.
“There, now. You’re a sweet guy.
I’m going to pretend-forget and
leave the cap on you till the
doctor comes.”

With a bright smile she
squeezed his shoulder.

She hastened out of the room.

The white of her skirt flashed
prettily as she went out the
door. He saw that she had very
shapely legs indeed.

She was nice, but the cap . . .
ah, it was the cap that mattered!
He closed his eyes and let the
cap go on stimulating the pleas-
ure centers of his brain. The
pain in his skin was still there,
but it did not matter any more
than did the chair standing in
the corner. The pain was just
something that happened to be
in the room.

A FIRM touch on his arm
made him open his eyes.

The older, authoritative-look-
ing man was standing beside the
bed, looking down at him with
a quizzical smile.

“She did it again,” said the
old man.

Mercer shook his head, trying
to indicate that the young nurse
had done nothing wrong.

“I’m Doctor Vomact,” said
the older man, “and I am going

to take this cap off you. You
will then experience the pain
again, but I think it will not be
so bad. You can have the cap
several more times before you
leave here.”

With a swift, firm gesture he
snatched the cap off Mercer’s
head.

Mercer promptly doubled up
with the inrush of fire from his
skin. He started to scream and
then saw that Doctor Vomact
was watching him calmly.

Mercer gasped, “It is — easier
now.”

“I knew it would be,” said the
doctor. “I had to take the cap
off to talk to you. You have a
few choices to make.”

“Yes, doctor,” gasped Mercer.

“You have committed a seri-
ous crime and you are going
down to the surface of Shayol.”

“Yes,” said Mercer.

“Do you want to tell me your
crime?”

Mercer thought of the white
palace walls in perpetual sun-
light, and the soft mewing of the
little things when he reached
them. He tightened his arms,
legs, back and jaw. “No,” he
said, “I don’t want to talk about
it. It’s the crime without a name.
Against the Imperial family . . .”

“Fine,” said the doctor, “that’s
a healthy attitude. The crime is
past. Your future is ahead. Now,
I can destroy your mind before

A PLANET NAMED SHAYOL

15

you go down — if you want me
to.”

“That’s against the law,” said
Mercer.

Doctor Vomact smiled warmly
and confidently. “Of course it is.
A lot of things are against hu-
man law. But there are laws of
science, too. Your body, down on
Shayol, is going to serve science.
It doesn’t matter to me whether
that body has Mercer’s mind or
the mind of a low-grade shell-
fish. I have to leave enough
mind in you to keep the body
going, but I can wipe out the
historic you and give your body
a better chance of being happy.
It’s your choice, Mercer. Do you
want to be you or not?”

Mercer shook his head back
and forth, “I don’t know.”

“I’m taking a chance,” said
Doctor Vomact, “in giving you
this much leeway. I’d have it
done if I were in your position.
It’s pretty bad down there.”

Mercer looked at the full,
broad face. He did not trust the
comfortable smile. Perhaps this
was a trick to increase his pun-
ishment. The cruelty of the
Emperor was proverbial. Look
at what he had done to the
widow of his predecessor, the
Dowager Lady Da. She was
younger than the Erpperor him-
self, and he had sent her to a
place worse than death. If he
had been sentenced to Shayol,

why was this doctor trying to
interfere with the rules? Maybe
the doctor himself had been con-
ditioned, and did not know what
he was offering.

Doctor Vomact read Mercer’s
face. “All right. You refuse. You
want to take your mind down
with you. It’s all right with me.
I don’t have you on my con-
science. I suppose you’ll refuse
the next offer too. Do you want
me to take your eyes out before
you go down? You’ll be much
more comfortable without vision.
I know that, from the voices that
we record for the warning broad-
casts. I can sear the optic nerves
so that there will be no chance
of your getting vision again.”
Mercer rocked back and forth.
The fiery pain had become a
universal itch, but the soreness
of his spirit was greater than the
discomfort of his skin.

“You refuse that, too?” said
the doctor.

“I suppose so,” said Mercer.
“Then all I have to do is to
get ready. You can have the cap
for a while, if you want.”

Tl/TERCER said, “Before I put
the cap on, can you tell
me what happens down there?”
“Some of it,” said the doctor.
“There is an attendant. He is a
man, but not a human being. He
is a homunculus fashioned out
of cattle material. He is intelli-

16

GALAXY

gent and very conscientious. You
specimens are turned loose on
the surface of Shayol. The drom-
ozoa are a special life-form
there. When they settle in your
body, B’dikkat — that’s the at-
tendant — carves them out with
an anesthetic and sends them up
here. We freeze the tissue cul-
tures, and they are compatible
with almost any kind of oxygen-
based life. Half the surgical re-
pair you see in the whole
universe comes out of buds that
we ship from here. Shayol is a
very healthy place, so far as
survival is concerned. You won’t
die.”

“You mean,” said Mercer,
“that I am getting perpetual
punishment.”

“I didn’t say that,” said Doctor
Vomact. “Or if I did, I was
wrong. You won’t die soon. I
don’t know how long you will
live down there. Remember, no
matter how uncomfortable you
get, the samples which B’dikkat
sends up will help thousands of
people in all the inhabited
worlds. Now take the cap.”

“I’d rather talk,” said Mercer.
“It may be my last chance.”

The doctor looked at him
strangely. “If you can stand that
pain, go ahead and talk.”

“Can I commit suicide down
there?”

“I don’t know,” said the doc-
tor. “It’s never happened. And

to judge by the voices, you’d
think they wanted to.”

“Has anybody ever come back
from Shayol?”

“Not since it was put off lim-
its about four hundred years
ago.”

“Can I talk to other people
down there?”

“Yes,” said the doctor.

“Who punishes me down
there?”

“Nobody does, you fool,” cried
Doctor Vomact. “It’s not punish-
ment. People don’t like it down
on Shayol, and it’s better, I
guess, to get convicts instead of
volunteers. But there isn’t any-
body against you at all.”

“No jailers?” asked Mercer,
with a whine in his voice.

“No jailers, no rules, no pro-
hibitions. Just Shayol, and B’d-
ikkat to take care of you. Do
you still want your mind and
your eyes?”

“I’ll keep them,” said Mercer.
“I’ve gone this far and I might
as well go the rest of the way.”

“Then let me put the cap on
you for your second dose,” said
Doctor Vomact.

The doctor adjusted the cap
just as lightly and delicately as
had the nurse; he was quicker
about it. There was no sign of
his picking out another cap for
himself.

The inrush of pleasure was
like a wild intoxication. His

A PLANET NAMED SHAYOL

17

burning skin receded into dis-
tance. The doctor was near in
space, but even the doctor did
not matter. Mercer was not
afraid of Shayol. The pulsation
of happiness out of his brain was
too great to leave room for fear
or pain.

Doctor Vomact was holding
out his hand.

Mercer wondered why, and
then realized that the wonderful,
kindly cap-giving man was of-
fering to shake hands. He lifted
his own. It was heavy, but his
arm was happy, too.

They shook hands. It was
curious, thought Mercer, to feel
the handshake beyond the dou-
ble level of cerebral pleasure
and dermal pain.

“Good-by, Mr. Mercer,” said
the doctor. “Goodby and a good
good night. . .”

II

r T'HE ferry satellite was a hos-
pitable place. The hundreds
of hours that followed were like
a long, weird dream.

Twice again the young nurse
sneaked into his bedroom with
him when he was being given
the cap and had a cap with him.
There were baths which calloused
his whole body. Under strong
local anesthetics, his teeth were
taken out and stainless steel took
their place. There were irradia-

tions under blazing lights which
took away the pain of his skin.
There were special treatments for
his fingernails and toenails. Grad-
ually they changed into formid-
able claws; he found himself strop-
ping them on the aluminum bed
one night and saw that they left
deep marks.

His mind never became com-
pletely clear.

Sometimes he thought that he
was home with his mother, that
he was little again, and in pain.
Other times, under the cap, he
laughed in his bed to think that
people were sent to this place
for punishment when it was all
so terribly much fun. There
were no trials, no questions, no
judges. Food was good, but he
did not think about it much; the
cap was better. Even when he
was awake, he was drowsy.

At last, with the cap on him,
they put him into a adiabatic
pod — a one-body missile which
could be dropped from the ferry
to the planet below. He was all
closed in, except for his face.

Doctor Vomact seemed to
swim into the room. “You are
strong, Mercer,” the doctor
shouted, “you are very strong!
Can you hear me?”

Mercer nodded.

“We wish you well, Mercer.
No matter what happens, re-
member you are helping other
people up here.”

18

GALAXY

“Can I take the cap with me?”
said Mercer.

For an answer, Doctor Vo-
mact removed the cap himself.
Two men closed the lid of the
pod, leaving Mercer in total
darkness. His mind started to
clear, and he panicked against
his wrappings.

There was the roar of thunder
and the taste of blood.

next thing that Mercer
A knew, he was in a cool, cool
room, much chillier than the
bedrooms and operating rooms
of the satellite. Someone was
lifting him gently onto a table.

He opened his eyes.

An enormous face, four times
the size of any human face
Mercer had ever seen, was look-
ing down at him. Huge brown
eyes, cowlike in their gentle in-
offensiveness, moved back and
forth as the big face examined
Mercer’s wrappings. The face
was that of a handsome man of
middle years, clean-shaven, hair
chestnut-brown, with sensual full
lips and gigantic but healthy
yellow teeth exposed in a half
smile. The face saw Mercer’s
eyes open, and spoke with a
deep friendly roar.

“I’m your best friend. My
name is B’dikkat, but you don’t
have to use that here. Just call
me Friend, and I will always
help you.”

“I hurt,” said Mercer.

“Of course you do. You hurt
all over. That’s a big drop,” said
B’dikkat.

“Can I have a cap, please,”
begged Mercer. It was not a
question; it was a demand;
Mercer felt that his private in-
ward eternity depended on it.

B’dikkat laughed. “I haven’t
any caps down here. I might use
them myself. Or so they think.
I have other things, much better.
No fear, fellow, I’ll fix you up.”

Mercer looked doubtful. If the
cap had brought him happiness
on the ferry, it would take at
least electrical stimulation of the
brain to undo whatever torments
the surface of Shayol had to
offer.

B’dikkat’s laughter filled the
room like a bursting pillow.

“Have you ever heard of con-
damine?”

“No,” said Mercer.

“It’s a narcotic so powerful
that the pharmacopeias are not
allowed to mention it.”

“You have that?” said Mercer
hopefully.

“Something better. I have
super-condamine. It’s named af-
ter the New French town where
they developed it. The chemists
hooked in one more hydrogen
molecule. That gave it a real
jolt. If you took it in your pres-
ent shape, you’d be dead in
three minutes, but those three

20

GALAXY

minutes would seem like ten
thousand years of happiness to
the inside of your mind.” B’dik-
kat rolled his brown cow eyes
expressively and smacked his
rich red lips with a tongue of
enormous extent.

“What’s the use of it, then?”

“You can take it,” said B’dik-
kat. “You can take it after you
have been exposed to the
dromozoa outside this cabin.
You get all the good effects and
none of the bad. You want to
see something?”

What answer is there except
yes, thought Mercer grimly; does
he think I have an urgent invi-
tation to a tea party?

“Look out the window,” said
B’dikkat, “and tell me what you
see.”

The atmosphere was clear.
The surface was like a desert,
ginger-yellow with streaks of
green where lichen and low
shrubs grew, obviously stunted
and tormented by high, dry
winds. The landscape was mo-
notonous. Two or three hundred
yards away there was a herd of
bright pink objects which
seemed alive, but Mercer could
not see them well enough to de-
scribe them clearly. Further
away, on the extreme right of
his frame of vision, there was
the statue of an enormous hu-
man foot, the height of a six-
story building. Mercer could not

see what the foot was connected
to. “I see a big foot,” said he,
“but — ”

“But what?” said B’dikkat,
like an enormous child hiding
the denouement of a hugely pri-
vate joke. Large as he was, he
would have been dwarfed by
any one of the toes on that tre-
mendous foot.

“But it can’t be a real foot,”
said Mercer.

“It is,” said B’dikkat. “That’s
Go-Captain Alvarez, the man
who found this planet. After six
hundred years he’s still in fine
shape. Of course, he’s mostly
dromozootic by now, but I think
there is some human conscious-
ness inside him. You know what
I do?”

“What?” said Mercer.

“I give him six cubic centi-
meters of super-condamine and
he snorts for me. Real happy
little snorts. A stranger might
think it was a volcano. That’s
what super-condamine can do.
And you’re going to get plenty
of it. You’re a lucky, lucky man,
Mercer. You have me for a
friend, and you have my needle
for a treat. I do all the work
and you get all the fun. Isn’t
that a nice surprise?”

Mercer thought, You’re lying!
Lying! Where do the screams
come from that we have all
heard broadcast as a warning on
Punishment Day? Why did the

A PLANET NAMED SHAYOL

21

doctor offer to cancel my brain
or to take out my eyes?

The cow-man watched him
sadly, a hurt expression on his
face. “You don’t believe me,” he
said, very sadly.

“It’s not quite that,” said
Mercer, with an attempt at
heartiness, “but I think you’re
leaving something out.”

“Nothing much,” said B’dik-
kat. “You jump when the dro-
mozoa hit you. You’ll be upset
when you start growing new
parts — heads, kidneys, hands.
I had one fellow in here who
grew thirty-eight hands in a
single session outside. I took
them all off, froze them and sent
them upstairs. I take good care
of everybody. You’ll probably
yell for a while. But remember,
just call me Friend, and I have
the nicest treat in the universe
waiting for you. Now, would you
like some fried eggs? I don’t eat
eggs myself, but most true men
like them.”

“Eggs?” said Mercer. “What
have eggs got to do with it?”
“Nothing much. It’s just a
treat for you people. Get some-
thing in your stomach before
you go outside. You’ll get
through the first day better.”
Mercer, unbelieving, watched
as the big man took two pre-
cious eggs from a cold chest,
expertly broke them into a little
pan and put the pan in the heat-

field at the center of the table
Mercer had awakened on.

“Friend, eh?” B’dikkat grinned.
“You’ll see I’m a good friend.
When you go outside, remember
that.”

A N hour later, Mercer did go
outside.

Strangely at peace with him-
self, he stood at the door. B’dikkat
pushed him in a brotherly way,
giving him a shove which was
gentle enough to be an encour-
agement.

“Don’t make me put on my
lead suit, fellow.” Mercer had
seen a suit, fully the size of an
ordinary space-ship cabin, hang-
ing on the wall of an adjacent
room. “When I close this door,
the outer one will open. Just
walk on out.”

“But what will happen?” said
Mercer, the fear turning around
in his stomach and making little
grabs at his throat from the in-
side.

“Don’t start that again,” said
B’dikkat. For an hour he had
fended off Mercer’s questions
about the outside. A map? B’dik-
kat had laughed at the thought.
Food? He said not to worry.
Other people? They’d be there.
Weapons? What for, B’dikkat
had replied. Over and over
again, B’dikkat had insisted that
he was Mercer’s friend. What
would happen to Mercer? The

22

GALAXY

same that happened to every
body else.

Mercer stepped out.

Nothing happened. The day
was cool. The wind moved
gently against his toughened
skin.

Mercer looked around appre-
hensively.

The mountainous body of
Captain Alvarez occupied a good
part of the landscape to the
right. Mercer had no wish to get
mixed up with that. He glanced
back at the cabin. B’dikkat was
not looking out the window.

Mercer walked slowly, straight
ahead.

There was a flash on the
ground, no brighter than the
glitter of sunlight on a fragment
of glass. Mercer felt a sting in
the thigh, as though a sharp in-
strument had touched him
lightly. He brushed the place
with his hand.

It was as though the sky fell
in.

A pain — it was more than a
pain: it was a living throb —
ran from his hip to his foot on
the right side. The throb reached
up to his chest, robbing him of
breath. He fell, and the ground
hurt him. Nothing in the hospi-
tal-satellite had been like this.
He lay in the open air, trying
not to breathe, but he did
breathe anyhow. Each time he
breathed, the throb moved with

his thorax. He lay on his back,
looking at the sun. At last he
noticed that the sun was violet-
white.

It was no use even thinking of
calling. He had no voice. Ten-
drils of discomfort twisted within
him. Since he could not stop
breathing, he concentrated on
taking air in the way that hurt
him least. Gasps were too much
work. Little tiny sips of air hurt
him least.

The desert around him was
empty. He could not turn his
head to look at the cabin. Is this
it? he thought. Is an eternity of
this the punishment of Shayol?

There were voices near him.

Two faces, grotesquely pink,
looked down at him. They might
have been human. The man
looked normal enough, except
for having two noses side by
side. The woman was a carica-
ture beyond belief. She had
grown a breast on each cheek
and a cluster of naked baby-like
fingers hung limp from her fore-
head.

“It’s a beauty,” said the wo-
man, “a new one.”

“Come along,” said the man.

They lifted him to his feet.
He did not have strength enough
to resist. When he tried to speak
to them a harsh cawing sound,
like the cry of an ugly bird,
came from his mouth.

They moved with him effi-

A PLANET NAMED SHAYOL

23

ciently. He saw that he was be-
ing dragged to the herd of pink
things.

As they approached, he saw
that they were people. Better, he
saw that they had once been
people. A man with the beak of
a flamingo was picking at his
own body. A woman lay on the
ground; she had a single head,
but beside what seemed to be
her original body, she had a
boy’s naked body growing side-
wise from her neck. The boy-
body, clean, new, paralytically
helpless, made no movement
other than shallow breathing.
Mercer looked around. The only
one of the group who was wear-
ing clothing was a man with his
overcoat on sidewise. Mercer
stared at him, finally realizing
that the man had two — or was
it three? — stomachs growing
on the outside of his abdomen.
The coat held them in place.
The transparent peritoneal wall
looked fragile.

“New one,” said his female
captor. She and the two-nosed
man put him down.

TPHE group lay scattered on the
ground.

Mercer lay in a state of stupor
among them.

An old man’s voice said, “I’m
afraid they’re going to feed us
pretty soon.”

“Oh, no!” “It’s too early!” “Not

again!” Protests echoed from the
group.

The old man’s voice went on,
“Look, near the big toe of the
mountain!”

The desolate murmur in the
group attested their confirmation
of what he had seen.

Mercer tried to ask what it
was all about, but produced only
a caw.

A woman — was it a woman?
— crawled over to him on her
hands and knees. Beside her or-
dinary hands, she was covered
with hands all over her trunk
and halfway down her thighs.
Some of the hands looked old
and withered. Others were as
fresh and pink as the baby-fin-
gers on his captress’ face. The
woman shouted at him, though
it was not necessary to shout.

“The dromozoa are coming.
This time it hurts. When you get
used to the place, you can dig
in — ”

She waved at a group of
mounds which surrounded the
herd of people.

“They’re dug in,” she said.

Mercer cawed again.

“Don’t you worry,” said the
hand-covered woman, and gasped
as a flash of light touched her.

The lights reached Mercer
too. The pain was like the first
contact but more probing. Mer-
cer felt his eyes widen as odd
sensations within his body led to

24

GALAXY

an inescapable conclusion: these
lights, these things, these what-
ever-they-were, were feeding him
and building him up.

Their intelligence, if they had
it, was not human, but their mo-
tives were clear. In between the
stabs of pain he felt them fill
his stomach, put water in his
blood, draw water from his kid-
neys and bladder, massage his
heart, move his lungs for him.

Every single thing they did
was well meant and beneficent
in intent.

And every single action hurt.

Abruptly, like the lifting of a
cloud of insects, they were gone.
Mercer was aware of a noise
somewhere outside — a brain-
less, bawling cascade of ugly
noise. He started to look around.
And the noise stopped.

It had been himself, scream-
ing. Screaming the ugly screams
of a psychotic, a terrified drunk,
an animal driven out of under-
standing or reason.

When he stopped, he found he
had his speaking voice again.

A man came to him, naked
like the others. There was a
spike sticking through his head.
The skin had healed around it
on both sides. “Hello, fellow,”
said the man with the spike.

“Hello,” said Mercer. It was a
foolishly commonplace thing to
say in a place like this.

“You can’t kill yourself,” said

the man with the spike through
his head.

“Yes, you can,” said the wom-
an, covered with hands.

Mercer found that his first
pain had disappeared. “What’s
happening to me?”

“You got a part,” said the
man with the spike. “They’re al-
ways putting parts on us. After
a while B’dikkat comes and cuts
most of them off, except for the
ones that ought to grow a little
more. Like her,” he added, nod-
ding at the woman who lay with
the boy-body growing from her
neck.

“And that’s all?” said Mercer.
“The stabs for the new parts
and the stinging for the feeding.”

“No,” said the man. “Some-
times they think we’re too cold
and they fill our insides with
fire. Or they think we’re too hot
and they freeze us, nerve by
nerve.”

The woman with the boy-
body called over, “And some-
times they think we’re unhappy,
so they try to force us to be
happy. 7 think that’s the worst
of all.”

Mercer stammered, “Are you
people — I mean — are you the
only herd?”

The man with the spike
coughed instead of laughing.
“Herd! That’s funny. The land
is full of people. Most of them
dig in. We’re the ones who can

A PLANET NAMED SHAYOL

25

still talk; we stay together for
company. We get more turns
with B’dikkat that way.”

Mercer started to ask another
question, but he felt the strength
run out of him. The day had
been too much.

The ground rocked like a ship
on water. The sky turned black.
He felt someone catch him as
he fell. He felt himself being
stretched out on the ground.
And then, mercifully and magi-
cally, he slept.

Ill

ITHIN a week, he came to
know the group well. They
were an absent-minded bunch of
people. Not one of them ever
knew when a dromozoon might
flash by and add another part.
Mercer was not stung again, but
the incision he had obtained just
outside the cabin was hardening.
Spike-head looked at it when
Mercer modestly undid his belt
and lowered the edge of his
trouser-top so they could see the
wound.

“You’ve got a head,” he said.
“A whole baby head. They’ll be
glad to get that one upstairs
when B’dikkat cuts it off you.”
The group even tried to ar-
range his social life. They intro-
duced him to the girl of the
herd. She had grown one body
after another, pelvis turning into

shoulders and the pelvis below
that turning into shoulders again
until she' was five people long.
Her face was unmarred. She
tried to be friendly to Mercer.

He was so shocked by her
that he dug himself into the soft
dry crumbly earth and stayed
there for what seemed like a
hundred years. He found later
that it was less than a full day.
When he came out, the long
many-bodied girl was waiting for
him.

“You didn’t have to come out
just for me,” said she.

Mercer shook the dirt off him-
self.

He looked around. The violet
sun was going down, and the sky
was streaked with blues, deeper
blues and trails of orange sunset.

He looked back at her. “I
didn’t get up for you. It’s no use
lying there, waiting for the next
time.”

“I want to show you some-
thing,” she said. She pointed to
a low hummock. “Dig that up.”

Mercer looked at her. She
seemed friendly. He shrugged and
attacked the soil with his power-
ful claws. With tough skin and
heavy digging-nails on the ends
of his fingers, he found it was
easy to dig like a dog. The earth
cascaded beneath his busy
hands. Something pink appeared
down in the hole he had dug.
He proceeded more carefully.

26

GALAXY

He knew what it would be.

It was. It was a man, sleeping.
Extra arms grew down one side
of his body in an orderly series.
The other side looked normal.

Mercer turned back to the
many-bodied girl, who had
writhed closer.

“That’s what I think it is,
isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she said. “Doctor Vo-
mact burned his brain out for
him. And took his eyes out, too.”

Mercer sat back on the
ground and looked at the girl.
“You told me to do it. Now tell
me what for.”

“To let you see. To let you
know. To let you think.”

“That’s all?” said Mercer.

The girl twisted with startling
suddenness. All the way down
her series of bodies, her chests
heaved. Mercer wondered how
the air got into all of them. He
did not feel sorry for her; he did
not feel sorry for anyone except
himself. When the spasm passed
the girl smiled at him apolo-
getically.

“They just gave me a new
plant.”

Mercer nodded grimly.

“What now, a hand? It seems
you have enough.”

“Oh, those,” she said, looking
back at her many torsos. “I
promised B’dikkat that I’d let
them grow. He’s good. But that
man, stranger. Look at that man

you dug up. Who’s better off, he
or we?”

Mercer stared at her. “Is that
what you had me dig him up
for?”

“Yes,” said the girl.

“Do you expect me to
answer?”

“No,” said the girl, “not now.”

“Who are you?” said Mercer.

“We never ask that here. It
doesn’t matter. But since you’re
new, I’ll tell you. I used to be
the Lady Da — the Emperor’s
stepmother.”

“You!” he exclaimed.

She smiled, ruefully. “You’re
still so fresh you think it mat-
ters! But I have something more
important to tell you.” She
stopped and bit her lip.

“What?” he urged. “Better tell
me before I get another bite. I
won’t be able to think or talk
then, not for a long time. Tell
me now.”

She brought her face close to
his. It was still a lovely face,
even in the dying orange of this
violet-sunned sunset. “People
never live forever.”

“Yes,” said Mercer. “I knew
that.”

“ Believe it,” ordered the Lady
Da.

Lights flashed across the dark
plain, still in the distance. Said
she, “Dig in, dig in for the night.
They may miss you.”

Mercer started digging. He

A PLANET NAMED SHAYOL

27

glanced over at the man he had
dug up. The brainless body, with
motions as soft as those of a
starfish under water, was push-
ing its way back into the earth.

T^IVE or seven days later,
there was a shouting through
the herd.

Mercer had come to know a
half-man, the lower part of
whose body was gone and whose
viscera were kept in place with
what resembled a translucent
plastic bandage. The half-man
had shown him how to lie still
when the dromozoa came with
their inescapable errands of do-
ing good.

Said the half-man, “You can’t
fight them. They made Alvarez
as big as a mountain, so that he
never stirs. Now they’re trying
to make us happy. They feed us
and clean us and sweeten us up.
Lie still. Don’t worry about
screaming. We all do.”

“When do we get the drug?”
said Mercer.

“When B’dikkat comes.”

B’dikkat came that day, push-
ing a sort of wheeled sled ahead
of him. The runners carried it
over the hillocks; the wheels
worked on the surface.

Even before he arrived, the
herd sprang into furious action.
Everywhere, people were digging
up the sleepers. By the time
B’dikkat reached their waiting

place, the herd must have un-
covered twice their own number
of sleeping pink bodies — men
and woman, young and old. The
sleepers looked no better and no
worse than the waking ones.

“Hurry!” said the Lady Da.
“He never gives any of us a shot
until we’re all ready.”

B’dikkat wore his heavy lead
suit.

He lifted an arm in friendly
greeting, like a father returning
home with treats for his chil-
dren. The herd clustered around
him but did not crowd him.

He reached into the sled.
There was a harnessed bottle
which he threw over his shoul-
ders. He snapped the locks on
the straps. From the bottle there
hung a tube. Midway down the
tube there was a small pressure-
pump. At the end of the tube
there was a glistening hypodermic
needle.

When ready, B’dikkat ges-
tured for them to come closer.
They approached him with ra-
diant happiness. He stepped
through their ranks and past
them, to the girl who had the
boy growing from her neck.
His mechanical voice boomed
through the loudspeaker set in
the top of his suit.

“Good girl. Good, good girl.
You get a big, big present.” He
thrust the hypodermic into her
so long that Mercer could see

28

GALAXY

an air bubble travel from the
pump up to the bottle.

Then he moved back to the
others, booming a word now
and then, moving with improb-
able grace and speed amid the
people. His needle flashed as he
gave them hypodermics under
pressure. The people dropped to
sitting position or lay down on
the ground as though half-asleep.

TTE knew Mercer. “Hello, fel-
low. Now you can have
the fun. It would have killed
you in the cabin. Do you have
anything for me?”

Mercer stammered, not know-
ing what B’dikkat meant, and
the two-nosed man answered for
him, “I think he has a nice baby
head, but it isn’t big enough for
you to take yet.”

Mercer never noticed the
needle touch his arm.

B’dikkat had turned to the
next knot of people when the
super-condamine hit Mercer.

He tried to run after B’dikkat,
to hug the lead space suit, to tell
B’dikkat that he loved him. He
stumbled and fell, but it did not
hurt.

The many-bodied girl lay near
him. Mercer spoke to her.

“Isn’t it wonderful? You’re
beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
I’m so happy to be here.”

The woman covered with
growing hands came and sat be-

side them. She radiated warmth
and good fellowship. Mercer
thought that she looked very
distinguished and charming. He
struggled out of his clothes. It
was foolish and snobbish to wear
clothing when none of these nice
people did.

The two women babbled and
crooned at him.

With one corner of his mind
he knew that they were saying
nothing, just expressing the eu-
phoria of a drug so powerful
that the known universe had
forbidden it. With most of his
mind he was happy. He won-
dered how anyone could have
the good luck to visit a planet
as nice as this. He tried to tell
the Lady Da, but the words
weren’t quite straight.

A painful stab hit him in the
abdomen. The drug went after
the pain and swallowed it. It
was like the cap in the hospital,
only a thousand times better.
The pain was gone, though it
had been crippling the first time.

He forced himself to be delib-
erate. He rammed his mind into
focus and said to the two ladies
who lay pinkly nude beside him
in the desert, “That was a good
bite. Maybe I will grow another
head. That would make B’dikkat
happy!”

The Lady Da forced the fore-
most of her bodies in an upright
position. Said she, “I’m strong,

A PLANET NAMED SHAYOL

29

too. I can talk. Remember, man,
remember. People never live for-
ever. We can die, too, we can
die like real people. I do so be-
lieve in death!”

Mercer smiled at her through
his happiness.

“Of course you can. But isn’t
this nice . . .”

With this he felt his lips
thicken and his mind go slack.
He was wide awake, but he did
not feel like doing anything. In
that beautiful place, among all
those companionable and attrac-
tive people, he sat and smiled.

B’dikkat was sterilizing his
knives.

1Y/JERCER wondered how long
the super-condamine had
lasted him. He endured the minis-
trations of the dromozoa with-
out screams or movement. The
agonies of nerves and itching of
skin were phenomena which
happened somewhere near him,
but meant nothing. He watched
his own body with remote, cas-
ual interest. The Lady Da and
the hand-covered woman stayed
near him. After a long time the
half-man dragged himself over
to the group with his powerful
arms. Having arrived he blinked
sleepily and friendlily at them,
and lapsed back into the restful
stupor from which he had
emerged. Mercer saw the sun
rise on occasion, closed his eyes
30

briefly, and opened them to see
stars shining. Time had no
meaning. The dromozoa fed him
in their mysterious way; the
drug canceled out his needs for
cycles of the body.

At last he noticed a return
of the inwardness of pain.

The pains themselves had not
changed; he had.

He knew all the events which
could take place on Shayol. He
remembered them well from his
happy period. Formerly he had
noticed them — now he felt
them.

He tried to ask the Lady Da
how long they had had the drug,
and how much longer they
would have to wait before they
had it again. She smiled at him
with benign, remote happiness;
apparently her many torsos,
stretched out along the ground,
had a greater capacity for re-
taining the drug than did his
body. She meant him well, but
was in no condition for articulate
speech.

The half-man lay on the
ground, arteries pulsating pret-
tily behind the half-transparent
film which protected his abdom-
inal cavity.

Mercer squeezed the man’s
shoulder.

The half-man woke, recog-
nized Mercer and gave him a
healthily sleepy grin.

“ ‘A good morrow to you, my
GALAXY

boy.’ That’s out of a play. Did
you ever see a play?”

“You mean a game with
cards?”

“No,” said the half-man, “a
sort of eye-machine with real
people doing the figures.”

“I never saw that,” said Mer-
cer, “but I — ”

“But you want to ask me
when B’dikkat is going to come
back with the needle.”

“Yes,” said Mercer, a little
ashamed of his obviousness.

“Soon,” said the half-man.
“That’s why I think of plays. We
all know what is going to hap-
pen. We all know when it is
going to happen. We all know
what the dummies will do — ”
he gestured at the hummocks in
which the decorticated men were
cradled — “and we all know
what the new people will ask.
But we never know how long a
scene is going to take.”

“What’s a ‘scene’?” asked Mer-
cer. “Is that the name for the
needle?”

The half-man laughed with
something close to real humor.
“No, no, no. You’ve got the
lovelies on the brain. A scene is
just a part of a play. I mean we
know the order in which things
happen, but we have no clocks
and nobody cares enough to
count days or to make calendars
and there’s not much climate
here, so none of us know how

long anything takes. The pain
seems short and the pleasure
seems long. I’m inclined to think
that they are about two Earth-
weeks each.”

Mercer did not know what an
“Earth-week” was, since he had
not been a well-read man before
his conviction, but he got noth-
ing more from the half-man at
that time. The half-man received
a dromozootic implant, turned
red in the face, shouted sense-
lessly at Mercer, “Take it out,
you fool! Take it out of me!”

When Mercer looked on help-
lessly, the half-man twisted over
on his side, his pink dusty back
turned to Mercer, and wept
hoarsely and quietly to himself.

TI/I'ERCER himself could not
tell how long it was before
B’dikkat came back. It might
have been several days. It might
have been several months.

Once again B’dikkat moved
among them like a father; once
again they clustered like chil-
dren. This time B’dikkat smiled
pleasantly at the little head
which had grown out of Mercer’s
thigh — a sleeping child’s head,
covered with light hair on top
and with dainty eyebrows over
the resting eyes. Mercer got the
blissful needle.

When B’dikkat cut the head
from Mercer’s thigh, he felt the
knife grinding against the carti-

A PLANET NAMED SHAYOL

31

lage which held the head to his
own body. He saw the child-
face grimace as the head was
cut; he felt the far, cool flash of
unimportant pain, as B’dikkat
dabbed the wound with a corro-
sive antiseptic which stopped all
bleeding immediately.

The next time it was two legs
growing from his chest.

Then there had been another
head beside his own.

Or was that after the torso
and legs, waist to toe-tips, of the
little girl which had grown from
his side?

He forgot the order.

He did not count time.

Lady Da smiled at him often,
but there was no love in this
place. She had lost the extra
torsos. In between teratologies,
she was a pretty and shapely
woman; but the nicest thing
about their relationship was her
whisper to him, repeated some
thousands of time, repeated with
smiles and hope, “People never
live forever.”

She found this immensely
comforting, even though Mercer
did not make much sense out of
it.

Thus events occurred, and vic-
tims changed in appearance, and
new ones arrived. Sometimes
B’dikkat took the new ones, rest-
ing in the everlasting sleep of
their burned-out brains, in a
ground-truck to be added to

other herds. The bodies in the
truck threshed and bawled with-
out human speech when the
dromozoa struck them.

Finally, Mercer did manage to
follow B’dikkat to the door of
the cabin. He had to fight the
bliss of super-condamine to do
it. Only the memory of previous
hurt, bewilderment and perplex-
ity made him sure that if he did
not ask B’dikkat when he, Mer-
cer, was happy, the answer
would no longer be available
when he needed it. Fighting
pleasure itself, he begged B’dik-
kat to check the records and to
tell him how long he had been
there.

B’dikkat grudgingly agreed,
but he did not come out of the
doorway. He spoke through the
public address box built into the
cabin, and his gigantic voice
roared out over the empty plain,
so that the pink herd of talking
people stirred gently in their
happiness and wondered what
their friend B’dikkat might be
wanting to tell them. When he
said it, they thought it exceed-
ingly profound, though none of
them understood it, since it was
simply the amount of time that
Mercer had been on Shayol:

“Standard years — eighty-
four years, seven months, three
days, two hours, eleven and one
half minutes. Good luck, fellow.”

Mercer turned away.

34

GALAXY

The secret little corner of his
mind, which stayed sane through
happiness and pain, made him
wonder about B’dikkat. What
persuaded the cow-man to re-
main on Shayol? What kept him
happy without super-condamine?
Was B’dikkat a crazy slave to
his own duty or was he a man
who had hopes of going back to
his own planet some day, sur-
rounded by a family of little
cow-people resembling himself?
Mercer, despite his happiness,
wept a little at the strange fate
of B’dikkat. His own fate he ac-
cepted.

He remembered the last time
he had eaten — actual eggs
from an actual pan. The dromo-
zoa kept him alive, but he did
not know how they did it.

He staggered back to the
group. The Lady Da, naked in
the dusty plain, waved a hospi-
table hand and showed that
there was a place for him to sit
beside her. There were un-
claimed square miles of seating
space around them, but he ap-
preciated the kindliness of her
gesture none the less.

IV

r T , HE years, if they were years,
went by. The land of Shayol
did not change.

Sometimes the bubbling sound
of geysers came faintly across the

plain to the herd of men; those
who could talk declared it to be
the breathing of Captain Alvarez.
There was night and day, but no
setting of crops, no change of sea-
son, no generations of men. Time
stood still for these people, and
their load of pleasure was so
commingled with the shocks and
pains of the dromozoa that the
words of the Lady Da took on
very remote meaning.

“People never live forever.”

Her statement was a hope, not
a truth in which they could be-
lieve. They did not have the wit
to follow the stars in their
courses, to exchange names with
each other, to harvest the experi-
ence of each for the wisdom of
all. There was no dream of escape
for these people. Though they
saw the old-style chemical
rockets lift up from the field be-
yond B’dikkat’s cabin, they did
not make plans to hide among the
frozen crop of transmuted flesh.

Far long ago, some other
prisoner than one of these had
tried to write a letter. His hand-
writing was on a rock. Mercer
read it, and so had a few of the
others, but they could not tell
which man had done it. Nor did
they care.

The letter, scraped on stone,
had been a message home. They
could still read the opening:
“Once, I was like you, stepping
out of my window at the end of

A PLANET NAMED SHAYOL

35

day, and letting the winds blow
me gently toward the place I
lived in. Once, like you, I had one
head, two hands, ten fingers on
my hands. The front part of my
head was called a face, and I
could talk with it. Now I can
only write, and that only when I
get out of pain. Once, like you, I
ate foods, drank liquid, had a
name. I cannot remember the
name I had. You can stand up,
you who get this letter. I cannot
even stand up. I just wait for the
lights to put my food in me mole-
cule by molecule, and to take it
out again. Don’t think that I am
punished any more. This place
is not a punishment. It is some-
thing else.”

Among the pink herd, none of
them ever decided what was
“something else.”

Curiosity had died among
them long ago.

r T , HEN came the day of the
little people.

It was a time — not an hour,
not a year: a duration somewhere
between them — when the Lady
Da and Mercer sat wordless with
happiness and filled with the joy
of super-condamine. They had
nothing to say to one another; the
drug said all things for them.

A disagreeable roar . from
B’dikkat’s cabin made them stir
mildly.

Those two, and one or two

others, looked toward the speaker
of the public address system.

The Lady Da brought herself
to speak, though the matter was
unimportant beyond words. “I do
believe,” said she, “that we used
that call that the War Alarm.”

They drowsed back into their
happiness.

A man with two rudimentary
heads growing beside his own
crawled over to them. All three
heads looked very happy, and
Mercer thought it delightful of
him to appear in such a whimsical
shape. Under the pulsing glow of
super-condamine, Mercer regret-
ted that he had not used times
when his mind was clear to ask
him who he had once been. He
answered it for them. Forcing his
eyelids open by sheer will power,
he gave the Lady Da and Mercer
the lazy ghost of a military salute
and said, “Suzdal, ma’am and sir,
former cruiser commander. They
are sounding the alert. Wish to
report that I am ... I am ... I
am not quite ready for battle.”

He dropped off to sleep.

The gentle peremptories of the
Lady Da brought his eyes open
again.

“Commander, why are they
sounding it here? Why did you
come to us?”

“You, ma’am, and the gentle-
man with the ears seem to think
best of our group. I thought you
might have orders.”

36

GALAXY

Mercer looked around for the
gentleman with the ears. It was
himself. In that time his face was
almost wholly obscured with a
crop of fresh little ears, but he
paid no attention to them, other
than expecting that B’dikkat
would cut them all off in due
course and that the dromozoa
would give him something else.

The noise from the cabin rose
to a higher, ear-splitting intensity.

Among the herd, many people
stirred.

Some opened their eyes, looked
around, murmured, “It’s a noise,”
and went back to the happy
drowsing with super-condamine.

The cabin door opened.

B’dikkat rushed out, without
his suit. They had never seen him
on the outside without his pro-
tective metal suit.

He rushed up to them, looked
wildly around, recognized the
Lady Da and Mercer, picked
them up, one under each arm,
and raced with them back to the
cabin. He flung them into the
double door. They landed with
bone-splitting crashes, and found
it amusing to hit the ground so
hard. The floor tilted them into
the room. Moments later, B’dik-
kat followed.

He roared at them, “You’re
people, or you were. You under-
stand people; I only obey them.
But this I will not obey. Look
at that!”

Four beautiful human children
lay on the floor. The two smallest
seemed to be twins, about two
years of age. There was a girl of
five and a boy of seven or so.
All of them had slack eyelids.
All of them had thin red lines
around their temples and their
hair, shaved away, showed how
their brains had been removed.

B’dikkat, heedless of danger
from dromozoa, stood beside the
Lady Da and Mercer, shouting.

“You’re real people. I’m just a
cow. I do my duty. My duty does
not include this. These are
children.”

nPHE wise, surviving recess of
Mercer’s mind registered
shock and disbelief. It was hard
to sustain the emotion, because
the super-condamine washed at
his consciousness like a great tide,
making everything seem lovely.
The forefront of his mind, rich
with the drug, told him, “Won’t
it be nice to have some children
with us!” But the undestroyed in-
terior of his mind, keeping the
honor he knew before he came
to Shayol, whispered, “This is a
crime worse than any crime we
have committed! And the Empire
has done it.”

“What have you done?” said
the Lady Da. “What can we
do?”

“I tried to call the satellite.
When they knew what I was

A PLANET NAMED SHAYOL

37

talking about, they cut me off.
After all, I’m not people. The
head doctor told me to do my
work.”

“Was it Doctor Vomact?” Mer-
cer asked.

“Vomact?” said B’dikkat. “He
died a hundred years ago, of old
age. No, a new doctor cut me off.
I don’t have people-feeling, but
I am Earth-born, of Earth blood.
I have emotions myself. Pure
cattle emotions! This I cannot
permit.”

“What have you done?”

B’dikkat lifted his eyes to the
window. His face was illuminated
by a determination which, even
beyond the edges of the drug
which made them love him, made
him seem like the father of this
world — responsible, honorable,
unselfish.

He smiled. “They will kill me
for it, I think. But I have put in
the Galactic Alert — all ships
here”

The Lady Da, sitting back on
the floor, declared, “But that’s
only for new invaders! It is a
false alarm.” She pulled herself
together and rose to her feet.
“Can you cut these things off me,
right now, in case people come?
And get me a dress. And do you
have anything which will counter-
act the effects of the super-con-
damine?”

“That’s what I wanted!” cried
B’dikkat. “I will not take these

children. You give me leader-
ship.”

There and then, on the floor of
the cabin, he trimmed her down
to the normal proportions of
mankind.

The corrosive antiseptic rose
like smoke in the air of the
cabin. Mercer thought it all very
dramatic and pleasant, and
dropped off in catnaps part of the
time. Then he felt B’dikkat trim-
ming him too. B’dikkat opened a
long, long drawer and put the
specimens in; from the cold in the
room it must have been a refrig-
erated locker.

He sat them both up against
the wall.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said.
“There is no antidote for super-
condamine. Who would want
one? But I can give you the
hypos from my rescue boat. They
are supposed to bring a person
back, no matter what has hap-
pened to that person out in
space.”

There was a whining over the
cabin roof. B’dikkat knocked a
window out with his fist, stuck
his head out of the window and
looked up.

“Come on in,” he shouted.

r T'HERE was the thud of a
landing craft touching ground
quickly. Doors whirred. Mercer
wondered, mildly, why people
dared to land on Shayol. When

38

GALAXY

they came in he saw that they
were not people; they were
Customs Robots, who could
travel at velocities which people
could never match. One wore the
insigne of an inspector.

“Where are the invaders?”

“There are no — ” began
B’dikkat.

The Lady Da, imperial in her
posture though she was complete-
ly nude, said in a voice of com-
plete clarity, “I am a former
Empress, the Lady Da. Do you
know me?”

“No, ma’am,” said the robot
inspector. He looked as uncom-
fortable as a robot could look.
The drug made Mercer think that
it would be nice to have robots
for company, out on the surface
of Shayol.

“I declare this Top Emer-
gency, in the ancient words. Do
you understand? Connect me
with the Instrumentality.”

“We can’t — ” said the in-
spector.

“You can ask,” said the Lady
Da.

The inspector complied.

The Lady Da turned to B’dik-
kat. “Give Mercer and me those
shots now. Then put us outside
the door so the dromozoa can
repair these scars. Bring us in as
soon as a connection is made.
Wrap us in cloth if you do not
have clothes for us. Mercer can
stand the pain.”

“Yes,” said B’dikkat, keeping
his eyes away from the four soft
children and their collapsed eyes.

The injection burned like no
fire ever had. It must have been
capable of fighting the super-con-
damine, because B’dikkat put
them through the open window,
so as to save time going through
the door. The dromozoa, sensing
that they needed repair, flashed
upon them. This time the super-
condamine had something else
fighting it.

Mercer did not scream but he
lay against the wall and wept for
ten thousand years; in objective
time, it must have been several
hours.

The Customs robots were tak-
ing pictures. The dromozoa were
flashing against them too, some-
times in whole swarms, but
nothing happened.

Mercer heard the voice of the
communicator inside the cabin
calling loudly for B’dikkat. “Sur-
gery Satellite calling Shayol.
B’dikkat, get on the line!”

He obviously was not replying.

There were soft cries coming
from the other communicator, the
one which the customs officials
had brought into the room. Mer-
cer was sure that the eye-machine
was on and that people in other
worlds were looking at Shayol for
the first time.

B’dikkat came through the
door. He had torn navigation

A PLANET NAMED SHAYOL

39

charts out of his lifeboat. With
these he cloaked them.

Mercer noted that the Lady
Da changed the arrangement of
the cloak in a few minor ways
and suddenly looked like a per-
son of great importance.

They re-entered the cabin
door.

B’dikkat whispered, as if filled
with awe, “The Instrumentality
has been reached, and a Lord of
the Instrumentality is about to
talk to you.”

There was nothing for Mercer
to do, so he sat back in a corner
of the room and watched. The
Lady Da, her skin healed, stood
pale and nervous in the middle
of the floor.

The room filled with an odor-
less intangible smoke. The smoke
clouded. The full communicator
was on.

A human figure appeared.

A WOMAN, dressed in a uni-
form of radically conserva-
tive cut, faced the Lady Da.

“This is Shayol. You are the
Lady Da. You called me.”

The Lady Da pointed to the
children on the floor. “This must
not happen,” she said. “This is a
place of punishments, agreed up-
on between the Instrumentality
and the Empire. No one said any-
thing about children.”

The woman on the screen
looked down at the children.

“This is the work of insane
people!” she cried.

She looked accusingly at the
Lady Da, “Are you imperial?”

“I was an Empress, madam,”
said the Lady Da.

“And you permit this!”

“Permit it?” cried the Lady
Da. “I had nothing to do with
it.” Her eyes widened. “I am a
prisoner here myself. Don’t you
understand?”

The image-woman snapped,
“No, I don’t.”

“I,” said the Lady Da, “am a
specimen. Look at the herd out
there. I came from them a few
hours ago.”

“Adjust me,” said the image
woman to B’dikkat. “Let me see
that herd.”

Her body, standing upright,
soared through the wall in a
flashing arc and was placed in the
very center of the herd.

The Lady Da and Mercer
watched her. They saw even the
image lose its stiffness and dig-
nity. The image-woman waved an
arm to show that she should be
brought back into the cabin.
B’dikkat tuned her back into the
room.

“I owe you an apology,” said
the image. “I am the Lady
Johanna Gnade, one of the Lords
of the Instrumentality.”

Mercer bowed, lost his balance
and had to scramble up from the
floor. The Lady Da acknowl-

40

GALAXY

edged the introduction with a
royal nod.

The two women looked at each
other.

“You will investigate,” said the
Lady Da, “and when you have
investigated, please put us all to
death. You know about the
drug?”

“Don’t mention it,” said B’dik-
kat, “don’t even say the name in-
to a communicator. It is a secret
of the Instrumentality!”

“I am the Instrumentality,”
said the Lady Johanna. “Are you
in pain? I did not think that any
of you were alive. I had heard of
the surgery banks on your off-
limits planet, but I thought that
robots tended parts of people and
sent up the new grafts by rocket.
Are there any people with you?
Who is in charge? Who did this
to the children?”

B’dikkat stepped in front of
the image. He did not bow. “I’m
in charge.”

“You’re underpeople!” cried
the Lady Johanna. “You’re a
cow!”

“A bull, ma’am. My family is
frozen back on earth itself, and
with a thousand years’ service I
am earning their freedom and my
own. Your other questions,
ma’am. I do all the work. The
dromozoa do not affect me much,
though T have to cut a part off
myself now and then. I throw
those away. They don’t go into

the bank. Do you know the secret
rules of this place?”

The Lady Johanna talked to
someone behind her on another
world. Then she looked at B’dik-
kat and commanded, “Just don’t
name the drug or talk too much
about it. Tell me the rest.”

UW/T: HAVE,” said B’dikkat
** very formally, “thirteen
hundred and twenty-one people
here who can still be counted on
to supply parts when the dromo-
zoa implant them. There are
about seven hundred more, in-
cluding Go-Captain Alvarez, who
have been so thoroughly ab-
sorbed by the planet that it is no
use trimming them. The Empire
set up this place as a point of
uttermost punishment. But the
Instrumentality gave secret or-
ders for medicine — ” he ac-
cented the word strangely,
meaning super-condamine — “to
be issued so that the punishment
would be counteracted. The Em-
pire supplies our convicts; The
Instrumentality distributes the
surgical material.”

The Lady Johanna lifted her
right hand in a gesture of silence
and compassion. She looked
around the room. Her eyes came
back to the Lady Da. Perhaps
she guessed what effort the Lady
Da had made in order to remain
standing erect while the two
drugs, the super-condamine and

A PLANET NAMED SHAYOL

41

the lifeboat drug, fought within
her veins.

“You people can rest. I will
tell you now that all things pos-
sible will be done for you. The
Empire is finished. The Funda-
mental Agreement, by which the
Instrumentality surrendered to
the Empire a thousand years ago,
has been set aside. We did not
know that you people existed. We
would have found out in time, but
I am sorry we did not find out
sooner. Is there anything we can
do for you right away?”

“Time is what we all have,”
said the Lady Da. “Perhaps we
cannot ever leave Shayol, because
the dromozoa and the medicine.
The one could be dangerous. The
other must never be permitted to
be known.”

The Lady Johanna Gnade
looked around the room. When
her glance reached him, B’dikkat
fell to his knees and lifted his
enormous hands in complete sup-
plication.

“What do you want?” said she.

“These,” said B’dikkat, pointed
to the mutilated children. “Order
a stop on children. Stop it now!”
He commanded her with the last
cry, and she accepted his com-
mand. “And lady — ” He stopped,
as if shy.

“Yes? Go on.”

“Lady, I am unable to kill. It
is not in my nature. To work, to
help, but not to kill. What do I

do with these?” He gestured at
the four motionless children on
the floor.

“Keep them,” she said. “Just
keep them.”

“I can’t,” he said. “There’s no
way to get off this planet alive. I
do not have food for them in the
cabin. They will die in a few
hours. And governments,” he
added wisely, “take a long, long
time to do things.”

“Can you give them the
medicine? >>

“No, it would kill them if I
give them that stuff first before
the dromozoa have fortified their
bodily processes.”

The Lady Johanna Gnade
filled the room with tinkling
laughter that was very close to
weeping. “Fools, poor fools, and
the more fool I! If super-con-
damine works only after the
dromozoa, what is the purpose of
the secret?”

B’dikkat rose to his feet, of-
fended. He frowned, but he could
not get the words with which to
defend himself.

The Lady Da, ex-empress of a
fallen empire, addressed the
other lady with ceremony and
force: “Put them outside, so they
will be touched. They will hurt.
Have B’dikkat give them the
drug as soon as he thinks it safe.
I beg your leave, my lady. . .”

Mercer had to catch her before
she fell.

42

GALAXY

44'V7’OU’VE all had enough,”
said the Lady Johanna. “A
storm ship with heavily armed
troops is on its way to your ferry
satellite. They will seize the medi-
cal personnel and find out who
committed this crime against
children.”

Mercer dared to speak. “Will
you punish the guilty doctor?”
“You speak of punishment,”
she cried. “You!”

“It’s fair. I was punished for do-
ing wrong. Why shouldn’t he be?”
“Punish — punish!” she said
to him. “We will cure that doctor.
And we will cure you too, if we
can.”

Mercer began to weep. He
thought of the oceans of happi-
ness which super-condamine had
brought him, forgetting the hide-
ous pain and the deformities on
Shayol. Would there be no next
needle? He could not guess what
life would be like off Shayol. Was
there to be no more tender,
fatherly B’dikkat coming with his
knives?

He lifted his tear-stained face
to the Lady Johanna Gnade and
choked out the words, “Lady, we
are all insane in this place. I do
not think we want to leave.”

She turned her face away,
moved by enormous compassion.
Her next words were to B’dikkat.
“You are wise and good, even if
you are not a human being. Give
them all of the drug they can

take. The Instrumentality will
decide what to do with all of you.
I will survey your planet with
robot soldiers. Will the robots be
safe, cowman?”

B’dikkat did not like the
thoughtless name she called him,
but he held no offense. “The
robots will be all right, ma’am,
but the dromozoa will be excited
if they cannot feed them and
heal them. Send as few as you
can. We do not know how the
dromozoa live or die.”

“As few as I can,” she mur-
mured. She lifted her hand in
command to some technician un-
imaginable distances away. The
odorless smoke rose about her
and the image was gone.

A shrill cheerful voice spoke
up. “I fixed your window,” said
the customs robot. B’dikkat
thanked him absentmindedly. He
helped Mercer and the Lady Da
into the doorway. When they had
gotten outside, they were prompt-
ly stung by the dromozoa. It did
not matter.

B’dikkat himself emerged, car-
rying the four children in his two
gigantic, tender hands. He lay
the slack bodies on the ground
near the cabin. He watched as the
bodies went into spasm with the
onset of the dromozoa. Mercer
and the Lady Da saw that his
brown cow eyes were rimmed
with red and that his huge cheeks
were dampened by tears.

A PLANET NAMED SHAYOL

43

Hours or centuries.

Who could tell them apart?

The herd went back to its
usual life, except that the inter-
vals between needles were much
shorter. The once-commander,
Suzdal, refused the needle when
he heard the news. Whenever he
could walk, he followed the cus-
toms robot around as they photo-
graphed, took soil samples, and
made a count of the bodies. They
were particularly interested in
the mountain of the Go-Captain
Alvarez and professed themselves
uncertain as to whether there was
organic life there or not. The
mountain did appear to react to
super-condamine, but they could
find no blood, no heart-beat.
Moisture, moved by the dromo-
zoa, seemed to have replaced the
once-human bodily processes.

V

A ND then, early one morning,
the sky opened.

Ship after ship landed. People
emerged, wearing clothes.

The dromozoa ignored the
newcomers. Mercer, who was in
a state of bliss, confusedly tried
to think this through until he
realized that the ships were
loaded to their skins with com-
munications machines; the “peo-
ple” were either robots or images
of persons in other places.

The robots swiftly gathered to-

gether the herd. Using wheel-
barrows, they brought the hun-
dreds of mindless people to the
landing area.

Mercer heard a voice he knew.
It was the Lady Johanna Gnade.
“Set me high,” she commanded.

Her form rose until she seemed
one-fourth the size of Alvarez.
Her voice took on more volume.

“Wake them all,” she com-
manded.

Robots moved among them,
spraying them with a gas which
was both sickening and sweet.
Mercer felt his mind go clear.
The super-condamine still oper-
ated in his nerves and veins, but
his cortical area was free of it. He
thought clearly.

“I bring you,” cried the com-
passionate feminine voice of the
gigantic Lady Johanna, “the
judgment of the Instrumentality
on the planet Shayol.

“Item: the surgical supplies
will be maintained and the
dromozoa will not be molested.
Portions of human bodies will be
left here to grow, and the grafts
will be collected by robots.
Neither man nor homunculus will
live here again.

“Item: the underman B’dikkat,
of cattle extraction, will be re-
warded by an immediate return
to earth. He will be paid twice his
expected thousand years of
earnings.”

The voice of B’dikkat, without

GALAXY

amplification, was almost as loud
as hers through the amplifier. He
shouted his protest, “Lady,
Lady!”

She looked down at him, his
enormous body reaching to ankle
height on her swirling gown, and
said in a very informal tone,
“What do you want?”

“Let me finish my work first,”
he cried, so that all could hear.
“Let me finish taking care of
these people.”

The specimens who had minds
all listened attentively. The
brainless ones were trying to dig
themselves back into the soft
earth of Shayol, using their
powerful claws for the purpose.
Whenever one began to disap-

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pear, a robot seized him by a
limb and pulled him out again.

“Item: cephalectomies will be
performed on all persons with ir-
recoverable minds. Their bodies
will be left here. Their heads will
be taken away and killed as
pleasantly as we can manage,
probably by an overdosage of
super-condamine.”

“The last big jolt,” murmured
Commander Suzdal, who stood
near Mercer. “That’s fair enough.”
“Item: the children have been
found to be the last heirs of the
Empire. An over-zealous official
sent them here to prevent their
committing treason when they
grew up. The doctor obeyed
orders without questioning them.
Both the official and the doctor
have been cured and their mem-
ories of this have been erased, so
that they need have no shame
or grief for what they have done.”
“It’s unfair,” cried the half-
man. “They should be punished
as we were!”

The Lady Johanna Gnade
looked down at him. “Punishment
is ended. We will give you any-
thing you wish, but not the pain
of another. I shall continue.

“Item: since none of you wish
to resume the lives which you led
previously, we are moving you to
another planet nearby. It is simi-
lar to Shayol, but much more
beautiful. There are no dromo-
zoa.”

A PLANET NAMED SHAYOL

45

A T this an uproar seized the
herd. They shouted, wept,
cursed, appealed. They all
wanted the needle, and if they
had to stay on Shayol to get it,
they would stay.

“Item,” said the gigantic image
of the lady, overriding their
babble with her great but femin-
ine voice, “you will not have
super-condamine on the new
planet, since without dromozoa it
would kill you. But there will be
caps. Remember the caps. We
will try to cure you and to make
people of you again. But if you
give up, we will not force you.
Caps are very powerful; with
medical help you can live under
them many years.”

A hush fell on the group. In
their various ways, they were try-
ing to compare the electrical caps
which had stimulated their pleas-
ure-lobes with the drug which
had drowned them a thousand
times in pleasure. Their murmur
sounded like assent.

“Do you have any questions?”
said the Lady Johanna.

“When do we get the caps?”
said several. They were human
enough that they laughed at their
own impatience.

“Soon,” said she reassuringly,
“very soon.”

“Very soon,” echoed B’dikkat,
reassuring his charges even
though he was no longer in con-
trol.

“Question,” cried the Lady
Da.

“My Lady . . .?” said the Lady
Johanna, giving the ex-empress
her due courtesy.

“Will we be permitted mar-
riage?”

The Lady Johanna looked
astonished. “I don’t know.” She
smiled. “I don’t know any reason
why not — ”'

“I claim this man Mercer,” said
the Lady Da. “When the drugs
were deepest, and the pain was
greatest, he was the one who al-
ways tried to think. May I have
him?”

Mercer thought the procedure
arbitrary but he was so happy
that he said nothing. The Lady
Johanna scrutinized him and
then she nodded. She lifted her
arms in a gesture of blessing and
farewell.

The robots began to gather the
pink herd into two groups. One
group was to whisper in a ship
over to a new world, new prob-
lems and new lives. The other
group, no matter how much its
members tried to scuttle into the
dirt, was gathered for the last
honor which humanity could pay
their manhood.

B’dikkat, leaving everyone
else, jogged with his bottle across
the plain to give the mountain-
man Alvarez an especially large
gift of delight.

— CORDWAINER SMITH

46

GALAXY

Illustrated by BURNS

By ROBERT BLOCH

For that real deep-down badness,
nothing beats the Good Old Days.

MACHINE

ET HIM alone,” said
Stephen’s father. “It’s
I A a phase they all go
through. He’ll snap out of it.”
Stephen didn’t really believe
he was ever going to snap out of
it, but he was grateful that his
folks let him alone. He wasn’t
worried what they thought, just
as long as they allowed him to
watch the viddies.

Because his father was rich and
connected with the university
labs, Stephen had his own viddie
set. While his parents indulged
their normal tastes and watched
the adult mush on the wall down-
stairs, Stephen stayed in his room
and his own world.

It was a wonderful world for

47

any thirteen-year-old — the world
called the Good Old Days. There
were all kinds of viddie shows
about the golden pioneer era of
seventy-five years ago, the mar-
velous time when heroes like
Dion O’Bannion and Hymie
Weiss walked the Earth.

Stephen watched a show called
Big Jim — about Big Jim Colo-
simo and his lovable friends. He
watched The Enforcer; that was
the one about Frank Nitti. He
was a man of action, like the
heroes of Johnny Torrio and Legs
Diamond. The Legs Diamond
show was very exciting, because
Legs was the one who always
danced his way around the bul-
lets in a gang war. That was how
he got his name.

Stephen learned a lot about
the people who had lived in the
romantic past. He knew about
flashy gambling men like fancy
Arnold Rothstein, who was so
suave, and wild rascals like Bugs
Moran. There was a new show
out called The Great Dillinger,
and that was pretty good. But the
best of all was Stephen’s favorite
— Scarf ace Al. No wonder it was
right up there on top with all the
kids; its hero was Scarface Al
Capone, the Robin Hood of
Chicago, who took from the rich
and gave to the poor.

Lots of times Stephen found
himself humming the theme song,
which went:

Al Capone, Al Capone,

A mighty man who
walked alone —
Wherever daring deeds
are known,

Men sing the praise of
Al Capone.

Stephen liked the way the
machine guns came in on the
end of the last line.

But then he liked everything
about Al Capone; the way he got
his scar — defending his sister
from the crooked prohibition
agents; the way he disguised
himself as “Mr. Brown” when he
was fighting the wicked cops and
the thieving politicians of Chi-
cago. Stephen knew all about Al
Capone, riding in from his hide-
out in Cicero to bring justice to
Chicago and save pretty girls
from the evil Vice Squad men.

Stephen joined the “Scarface
Al Club” and ate enough cereal
to get himself the complete prize
outfit — the artificial scar to
wear, the bulletproof vest and
everything.

He might have been a very
happy boy if he hadn’t found his
uncle’s subjectivity reactor.

TT WAS a big machine, resem-

bling nothing quite so much
as the genetic control, which his
uncle had also invented. The
genetic control was a large box
in which a woman could sit and

48

GALAXY

be bombarded by radiations
which would eradicate recessive
and undesirable traits in her ova,
thus leading to the reproduction
of healthy offspring. This appar-
atus, marketed under the popular
name of “Heir Conditioner,” was
an immediate success because it
was a failure. Nothing really hap-
pened, but the woman who used
it felt better; in that respect it
resembled a face cream and had
the additional advantage of being
much more expensive.

The machine which Stephen
found — the subjectivity reactor
— was a failure because it was
a success. Not an immediate fail-
ure, for it was never manufac-
tured or marketed, but a gradual
failure. His uncle had devised it
while still a young man, many
years ago, and it too was a large
box which contained a variety of
mechanisms. Under their stim-
ulus, the subject became capable
of materializing, in tangible three-
dimensional form, his immediate
thought patterns.

The gradual failure came
about because his uncle had ex-
perimented upon himself, and
pretty soon his home was over-
flowing with tangible three-dimen-
sional forms to which his wife
objected; most particularly to the
redheads.

Consequently the subjectivity
reactor was carted off to the
storage building behind the uni-

versity labs where Stephen’s
uncle and father both worked,
and no one ever mentioned that
it was also capable, by virtue of
the same principle of materializ-
ing thought, of acting as a time
machine.

Stephen himself found it out
by accident one day when he
was playing around, exploring the
deserted warehouse premises. He
noticed the boxlike apparatus
and crawled inside, pretending
for the moment that he was a
hero like Pretty-Boy Floyd, hid-
ing out from the dirty old Feds.
He didn’t pay much attention to
the blinking lights and whirling
mirrors which became self-acti-
vating the moment he stepped
inside and closed the door; he
was wishing he had a gat to
protect himself in case that arch-
fiend J. Edgar Hoover showed up.
He’d show him!

“All right, copper — you asked
for it.” And he’d reach in his
pocket and pull out his gat, like
this, and —

Stephen felt the weight before
he saw it. And then he did pull
his hand out of his pocket and he
was holding a gat. A real roscoe,
a genuine equalizer. Stephen
stared at it, his thoughts whirling
faster than the mirrors.

The gun — where did it come
from? He’d just thought about it
and it was here; how could that
be? Actually, he hadn’t even

CRIME MACHINE

49

thought, just wished. The way he
wished he had been around back
in the Good Old Days, the way he
was wishing now. He’d give any-
thing to see real live American
History in the making, like that
morning of St. Valentine’s Day
in the garage on Clark Street . . .

f T^HE MIRRORS revved faster
and suddenly they disap-
peared. Everything disappeared.

It was like a viddie dissolve, so
Stephen wasn’t frightened. He
knew the next scene would come
up right after the commercial.
Only this wasn’t viddie and there
was no commercial. The next
scene came up when the blurring
stopped and he found himself
sitting in the same box, the
mirrors still whirring and he
heard the noise outside. Stephen
blinked, tugged at the door of

50

GALAXY

the compartment, opened it, and
saw the machine guns spit.

He knew where he was now.
He’d seen it a dozen times on
viddie, imagined it a thousand
more. The garage, at eleven
o’clock in the morning; the two
executioners disguised in the uni-
forms of the hated police were
mowing down the seven finks.

Stephen, in the subjectivity
reactor, had materialized at the

very instant the firing started.
For thirty seconds Stephen stared
at the finks as they writhed and
fell. And during those thirty
seconds the finks became men.
Men who wriggled and flopped
after the bullets struck, until the
two swarthy hoods in uniform
stepped up and completed their
work with revolvers. There was
blood on the wall and floor, and
a terrible, acrid odor. The two
men noticed it, too, and com-
mented harshly in Italian. One of
them laughed and spat on the
floor.

Stephen wasn’t laughing and
he felt that unless he got out of
here right away he’d do more
than spit. He started to close the
door and it was then that the
executioners looked up and saw
him.

“What the hell — ” said the
short one, and raised his revolver.
His taller companion slapped it
out of his hand.

“Wait,” he said He stooped,
picked up the machine gun, and
faced Stephen in the doorway of
the compartment “Awright, kid,
how you get in here? Where you
come from?” He raised the muz-
zle of his weapon. “C’mon, talk!”

Stephen talked. It was hard to,
with the choking in his throat as
he watched the machine gun
muzzle that was like a cruel
mouth — almost as cruel as the
mouth of the man who held it.

CRIME MACHIN E

51

It was hard to explain, too, and
he wasn’t sure he understood the
situation himself. Certainly the
shorter assassin didn’t under-
stand, because he nudged his
companion and said, “He’s nuts!
Hurry up and give it to him —
we gotta get outa here!”

The big man with the machine
gun shook his head. “Shaddup
and listen. Dincha hear? This
thing goes through time. It’s a
time machine. Aincha never
heard?”

“Porko Dio! No such thing — ”

“No such thing now.” The big
man nodded. “But maybe they
invent it later on. That’s where
this kid comes from. How else
you figure he got here if not like
that?”

“So?”

“So you wanna get outa here,
right?”

“Sure, to St. Louis. That’s
where A1 said we’d get the pay-
off — ”

“You know what kinda payoff
we end up with.” The big man
made a nasty noise in his throat.
“But suppose we really get out.
Suppose we go back with the
kid here.”

He took a step forward. “Aw-
right, kid, whaddya say?” He
stared at Stephen.

OTEPHEN stared back, into his
^ face and the face of his com-
panion. Here was his chance to

take two real live gangsters back
into his own world, his own time.
It was something he’d always
dreamed of. Only he had never
dreamed they really looked and
talked like this. And he had never
dreamed the reality he glimpsed
over their shoulders; the torn,
huddled, oozing reality on the
garage floor. Now he knew all
there was to knQw about the
Good Old Days.

The big man raised his weapon.
“Hurry up! We ain’t got all day.
Whaddya say?”

Stephen knew he himself didn’t
have all day, or even another
minute. Fortunately, thanks to
the viddies, he knew what to say
and how to say it. His hand
squeezed the trigger inside his
coat pocket. First the small man
went down and then the big man.

As the big man fell there was
a short, staccato burst from the
machine gun. Several bullets
punctured the shell of the com-
partment. But by this time
Stephen had slammed the door
of the subjectivity reactor and
hurled himself to the floor in
quivering panic, wishing with all
his being that he was back where
he belonged . . .

He might have had a hard
time explaining the presence of
the gat if he hadn’t wished so
strongly that it would disappear.
As it was, he emerged from the
subjectivity reactor completely

52

GALAXY

unscathed. To all intents and
appearances, Stephen was un-
changed by his experience.

The thing of it was that from
then on he never watched Scar-
face A1 any more.

“He’s growing up,” his mother
said proudly.

“What did I tell you?” his
father said. “I knew he’d get over
it. All it takes is time.”

When he said, “All it takes is
time,” he suddenly remembered
Stephen’s visit to the old storage
building. That night he made a
trip there himself to confirm his
suspicions.

And there, as he expected, he
found the subjectivity reactor —
and the telltale impressions left
by the machine-gun bullets.

Funny thing, they didn’t pen-
etrate with half the force of the
old Colt .45s. Stephen’s father
stopped until he found the holes
near the bottom of the machine.
Stephen’s father remembered the
day those shots had been fired.

Sometime he’d have to tell
Stephen. Tell him how it was
when he was a boy, when the
machine had first been invented.
Like father, like son.

Stephen’s father gazed at the
Colt bullet holes and smiled
reminiscently. He too had had his
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CRIME MACHINE

53

The creature from Venus didn't
know right from left — and life
and death hung in the balance!

AMATEUR
IT IN
CHANCERY

By GEORGE O. SMITH

P AUL Wallach came into
my office. He looked dis-
traught. By some trick of
selection, Paul Wallach, the direc-
tor of Project Tunnel, was one of
the two men in the place who did
not have a string of doctor’s and
scholar’s degrees to tack behind
their names. The other was I.
“Trouble, Paul?” I asked.

He nodded, saying, “The tun-
nel car is working.”

“It should. It’s been tested
enough.”

“Holly Carter drew the short
straw.”

“Er — •” I started and then
stopped short as the implication
became clear. “She’s — she’s —
not — ?”

“Holly made it to Venus all
right,” he said. “Trouble is we
can’t get her back.”

“Can’t get her back?”

He nodded again. “You know,
we’ve never really known very
much about the atmosphere of
Venus.”

“Yes.”

“Well, from what little came
through just before Holly blacked
out, it seems that there must be
one of the cyanogens in the atmos-
phere in a concentration high
enough to effect nervous paraly-
sis.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning,” said Paul Wallach
in a flat tone, “that Holly Carter
stopped breathing shortly after

54

GALAXY

she cracked the airlock. And her
heart stopped beating a minute
or so later.”

“Holly — dead?”

“Not yet, Tom,” he said. “If we
can get her back in the next fif-
teen or twenty minutes, modern
medicine can bring her back.”
“But there’ll be brain damage!”
“Oh, there may be some tempo-
rary impairment. Nothing that re-
training can’t restore. The big
problem is to bring her back.”
“We should have built two tun-
nel cars.”

“We should have done all sorts
of things. But when the terminal
rocket landed on Venus, every-
body in the place was too anxious
to try it out. Lord knows, I tried
to proceed at a less headlong pace.
But issuing orders to you people
is a waste of time and paper.”

I looked at him. “Doc,” I asked,
giving him the honorary title out
of habit, “Venus is umpty-million
miles from here. We haven’t
another tunnel car, and no rocket
could make it in time to do any
good. So how can we hope to
rescue Holly?”

“That’s the point,” said Wal-
lach. “Venus, it appears, is in-
habited.”

“Oh?”

“That’s what got Holly caught
in the first place. She landed, then
saw this creature approaching.
Believing that no life could exist
in an atmosphere dangerous to

life, she opened the airlock and
discovered otherwise.”

“So?”

“So now all we have to do is
to devise some way of explaining
to a Venusian the difference be-
tween left and right. I thought
you might help.”

“But I’m just a computer pro-
grammer.”

“That’s the point. We all fig-
ured that you have developed a
form of communication to that
machine of yours. The rest of the
crew, as you know, have a bit of
difficulty in communicating
among themselves in their own
jargon, let alone getting through
to normal civilians. When it
comes to a Venusian, they’re
licked.”

I said, “I’ll try.”

T>ROJECT Tunnel is the hard-
ware phase of a program
started a number of years ago
when somebody took a joke seri-
ously.

In a discussion of how the
tunnel diode works, one of the
scientists pointed out that if an
electron could be brought to ab-
solute rest, its position according
to Heisenberg Uncertainty would
be completely ambiguous. Hence
it had as high a possibility of be-
ing found on Venus as it had
of being found on Earth or any-
where else. Now, the tunnel diode
makes use of this effect by a

AMATEUR IN CHANCERY

55

voltage bias across the diode
junction. Between narrow limits,
the voltage bias is correct to upset
the ambiguity of Mr. Heisenberg,
making the electron nominally
found on one side of the junction
more likely to be found on the
other.

Nobody could deny the oper-
ability of the tunnel diode. Proj-
ect Tunnel was a serious attempt
to employ the tunnel effect in
gross matter.

The terminal rocket mentioned
by Paul Wallach carried the
equipment needed to establish
the voltage bias between Venus
and the Earth. Once established,
Project Tunnel was in a state that
caused it to maroon the most
wonderful girl in the world.

Since the latter statement is
my own personal opinion, my
pace from the office to the lab-
oratory was almost a dead run.

The laboratory was a mad-
house. People stood in little knots,
arguing. Those who weren’t talk-
ing were shaking their heads in
violent negation.

The only one who appeared un-
upset was Teresa Dwight, our
psi-girl. And here I must confess
an error. When I said that Paul
Wallach and I were the only ones
without a string of professorial
degrees, I missed Teresa Dwight.
I must be forgiven. Teresa had a
completely bland personality,
zero drive, and a completely un-

startling appearance. Teresa was
only fourteen. But she’d discov-
ered that her psi-power could get
her anything she really wanted.
Being human, therefore, she did
not want much. So forgive me for
passing her by.

But now I had to notice her. As
I came in, she looked up and said,
“Harla wants to know why can’t
he just try.”

W ALLACH went white. “Tell
that Venusian thing ‘NO!’
as loud as you can.”

Teresa concentrated, then
asked, “But why?”

“Does this Harla understand
the Heisenberg Effect?”

She said after a moment, “Har-
la says he has heard of it as a
theory. But he is not quite pre-
pared to believe that it does in-
deed exist as anything but an
abstract physical concept.”

“Tell Harla that Doctor Car-
ter’s awkward position is a direct
result of our ability to reduce the
tunnel effect to operate on gross
matter.”

“He realizes that. But now he
wants to know why you didn’t fire
one of the lower animals as a
test.”

“Tell him that using animals
for laboratory experiments is only
possible in a police state where
the anti-vivisection league can be
exiled to Siberia. Mink coats and
all. And let his Venusian mind

56

GALAXY

make what it can of that. Now,
Teresa — ”

“Yes?”

“Tell Harla, very carefully,
that pressing the left-hand button
will flash the tunnel car back here
as soon as he closes the airlock.
But tell him that pushing the
right-hand button will create
another bias voltage — where-
upon another mass of matter will
cross the junction. In effect, it
will rip a hole out of this labora-
tory near the terminal, over there,
and try to make it occupy the
same space as the tunnel car on
Venus. None of us can predict
what might happen when two
masses attempt to occupy the
same space. But the chances are
that some of the holocaust will
backfire across the gap and be as
violent at this end, too.”

“Harla says that he will touch
nothing until he has been assured
that it is safe.”

“Good. Now, Tom,” he said, ad-
dressing me, “how can we tell
right from left?”

“Didn’t you label ’em?”
“They’re colored red on the
right and green on the left.”

“Is Harla color-blind?”

“No, but from what I gather
Harla sees with a different spec-
trum than we do. So far as he is
concerned both buttons look
alike.”

“You could have engraved ’em
‘COME’ and ‘GO’.”

Frank Crandall snorted. “May-
be you can deliver an ‘English,
Self-Taught’ course through Tere-
sa to the Venusian?”

I looked at Crandall. I didn’t
much care for him. It seemed that
every time Holly Carter came
down out of her fog of theoretical
physics long enough to notice a
simpleton who had to have a
machine to perform routine cal-
culations, we were joined by
Frank Crandall who carted her
off and away from me. If this be
rank jealousy, make the most of
it. I’m human.

“Crandall,” I said, “even to a
Hottentot I could point out that
the engraved legend ‘GO’ con-
tains two squiggly symbols,
whereas the legend ‘RETURN’
contains ‘many’.”

Vtf^ALLACH stepped into the
tension by saying, “So we
didn’t anticipate alien life. But
now we’ve got the problem of
communicating with it.”

Crandall didn’t appear to no-
tice my stiff reply. He said, “Con-
found it, what’s missing?”

“What’s missing,” I told him, “is
some common point of reference.”
“Meaning?”

“Meaning that I could define
left from right to any semi-intelli-
gent human being who was aware
of the environment in which we
live.”

“For example?”

AMATEUR IN CHANCERY

57

I groped for an example and
said, lamely, “Well, there’s the
weather rule, valid for the north-
ern hemisphere. When the wind
is blowing on your back, the left
hand points to the low pressure
center.”

“Okay. But how about Venus?
Astronomical information, I
mean.”

I shook my head.

“Why not?” he demanded. “If
we face north, the sun rises on
our right, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. Even in the southern
hemisphere.”

“Well, then. So it doesn’t make
any difference which hemisphere
they’re in.”

“You’re correct. But you’re also
making the assumptions that
Venus rotates on its axis, that the
axis is aligned parallel to the
Earth’s and that the direction of
rotation is the same.”

‘We know that Venus rotates!”

‘We have every reason to be-
lieve so,” I agreed. “But only be-
cause thermocouples measure a
temperature on the darkside that
is too high to support the theory
that the diurnal period of Venus
is equal to the year. I think the
latest figures say something be-
tween a couple of weeks and a
few months. Next, the axis needn’t
be parallel to anything. Shucks,
Crandall, you know darned well
that the solar system is a finely
made clock with no two shafts

aligned, and elliptical gears that
change speed as they turn.”

U pRACTICALLY everything
^ in the solar system rotates
in the same direction.”

I looked at him. “Would you
like to take a chance that Venus
agrees with that statement?
You’ve got a fifty percent chance
that you’ll be right. Guess wrong
and we have a metric ton of hard-
ware trying to occupy the same
space as another metric ton of
matter.”

“But — ”

“And furthermore,” I went on,
“we’re just lucky that Polaris hap-
pens to be a pole star right now.
The poles of Mars point to noth-
ing that bright. Even then, we can
hardly expect the Venusian to
have divided the circumpolar sky
into the same zoo full of mythical
animals as our forebears — and
if we use the commonplace
expression, maybe the Venusian
never paused to take a long-
handled dipper of water from a
well. Call them stewpots and the
term is still insular. Sure, there’s
lots of pointers, but they have to
be identified. My mother always
insisted that the Pleiades were.
— er — was the Little Dipper.”
Teresa Dwight spoke up, pos-
sible for the second or third time
in her life without being spoken
to first. She said, “Harla has been
listening to you through me. Of

58

GALAXY

astronomy he has but a rudimen-
tary idea. He is gratified to learn
from you that there is a ‘sun’ that
provides the heat and light. This
has been a theory based upon
common sense; something had to
do it. But the light comes and
goes so slowly that it is difficult
to determine which direction the
sun rises from. The existence of
other celestial bodies than Venus
is also based on logic. If, they
claim, they exist, and their planet
exists, then there probably are
other planets with people who
cannot see them, either.”

“Quoth Pliny the Elder,” mum-
bled Paul Wallach.

I looked at him.

“Pliny was lecturing about
Pythagoras’ theory that the Earth
is round. A heckler asked him
why the people on the other side
didn’t fall off. Pliny replied that
on the other side there were un-
doubtedly fools who were asking
their wise men why we didn’t fall
off.”

“It’s hardly germane,” I said.

“I’m sorry. Yes. And time is
running out.”

nPHE laboratory door opened
to admit a newcomer, Lou
Graham, head of the electronics
crew.

He said, “I’ve got it!”

The chattering noise level died
out about three decibels at a time.
Lou said, “When a steel magnet

is etched in acid, the north pole
shows selective etching!”

I shook my head. “Lou,” I said,
“we don’t know whether Venus
has a magnetic field, whether it
is aligned to agree with the Earth’s
— nor even whether the Venusi-
ans have discovered the magnetic
compass.”

“Oh, that isn’t the reference
point,” said Lou Graham. “I’m
quite aware of the ambiguity. The
magnetic field does have a vector,
but the arrow that goes on the
end is strictly from human agree-
ment.”

“So how do you tell which is
the north pole?”

“By making an electromagnet!
Then using Ampere’s Right Hand
Rule. You grasp the electromag-
net in the right hand so that the
fingers point along the winding
in the direction of the current
flow. The thumb then points to
the north pole.”

“Oh, fine! Isn’t that just the
same eonfounded problem? Now
we’ve got to find out whether
Harla is equipped with a right
hand complete with fingers and
thumbs — so that we can tell him
which his right hand is!”

“No, no,” he said. “You don’t
understand, Tom. We don’t need
the right hand. Let’s wind our
electromagnet like this: We place
the steel bar horizontally in front
of us. The wire from ‘Start’ leaves
us, passes over the top of the

AMATEUR IN CHANCERY

59

bar, drops below the bar on the
far side, comes toward us on the
under side, rises above the bar on
the side toward us, and so on
around and around until we’ve
got our electromagnet wound.
Now if the ‘start’ is positive and
the ‘end’ is negative, the north
pole will be at the left. It will
show the selective etching in
acid.”

I looked at him. “Lou,” I said
slowly, “if you can define positive
and negative in un-ambiguous
terms as well as you wound that
electromagnet, we can get Holly
home. Can you?”

Lou turned to Teresa Dwight.
“Has this Harla fellow followed
me so far?”

She nodded.

“Can you speak for him?”
“You talk, I hear, he reads me.
I read him and I can speak.”

66/"\KAY, then,” said Lou Gra-
ham. “Now we build a Le
Clanche cell. Ask Harla does he
recognize carbon. A black or light-
absorbing element. Carbon is ex-
tremely common, it is the basis of
life chemistry. It is element num-
ber six in the periodic chart. Does
Harla know carbon?”

“Harla knows carbon.”

“Now we add zinc. Zinc is a
light metal easily extracted from
the ore. It is fairly abundant, and
it is used by early civilizations for
making brass or bronze long be-

fore the culture has advanced
enough to recognize zinc as an
element. Does Harla know zinc?”
“He may,” said Teresa very
haltingly. “What happens if Harla
gets the wrong metal?”

“Not very much,” said Lou.
“Any of the light, fairly plentiful
metals that are easily extracted
from the ore will suffice. Say tin,
magnesium, sodium, cadmium, so
on.”

“Harla says go on.”

“Now we make an electrolyte.
Preferably an alkaline salt.”

“Be careful,” I said. “Or you’ll
be asking Harla to identify stuff
from a litmus paper.”

“No,” said Lou. He faced
Teresa and said, “An alkaline
substance burns the flesh badly.”
“So do acids,” I objected.
“Alkaline substances are found
in nature,” he reminded me.
“Acids aren’t often natural. The
point is that an acid will work.
Even salt water will work. But an
alkaline salt works better. At any
rate, tell Harla that the stuff, like
zinc, was known to civilized
peoples many centuries before
chemistry became a science.
Acids, on the other hand, are
fairly recent.”

“Harla understands.”

“Now,” said Lou Graham tri-
umphantly, “we make our bat-
tery by immersing the carbon and
the zinc in the electrolyte. The
carbon is the positive electrode

60

GALAXY

and should be connected to the
start of our electromagnet,
whereas the end of the winding
must go to the zinc. This will
place the north pole to the left
hand.”

“Harla understands,” said
Teresa. “So far, Harla can per-
form this experiment in his mind.
But now we must identify which
end of the steel bar is north-pole
magnetic.”

“If we make the bar magnetic
and then immerse it in acid, the
north magnetic pole will be se-
lectively etched.”

“Harla says that this he does
not know about. He has never
heard of it, although he is quite
familiar with electromagnets,
batteries, and the like.”

I looked at Lou Graham. “Did
you cook this out of your head,
or did you use a handbook?”

He looked downcast. “I did use
a handbook,” he admitted.
“But — ”

“Lou,” I said unhappily, “I’ve
never said that we couldn’t es-
tablish a common frame of ref-
erence. What we lack is one that
can be established in minutes.
Something physical — ” I stopped
short as a shadowy thought began
to form.

"OAUL Wallach looked at me
as though he’d like to speak
but didn’t want to interrupt my
train of thoughts. When he could

contain himself no longer, he said,
“Out with it, Tom.”

“Maybe,” I muttered. “Surely
there must be something phy-
sical.”

“How so?”

“The tunnel car must be full
of it,” I said. “Screws?”

I turned to Saul Graben. Saul
is our mechanical genius; give
him a sketch made on used
Kleenex with a blunt lipstick and
he will bring you back a gleaming
mechanism that runs like a
hundred-dollar wrist watch.

But not this time. Saul shook
his head.

‘What’s permanent is welded
and what’s temporary is snapped
in with plug buttons,” he said.

“Good Lord,” I said. “There
simply must be something!”
There probably is,” said Saul.
“But this Harla chap would have
to use an acetylene torch to get
at it.”

I turned to Teresa. “Can this
psi-man Harla penetrate metal?”
“Can anyone?” she replied
quietly.

Wallach touched my arm.
“You’re making the standard,
erroneous assumption that a sense
of perception will give its owner
a blueprint-clear grasp of the me-
chanical details of some machin-
ery. It doesn’t. Perception, as I
understand it, is not even similar
to eyesight.”

“But — ” I fumbled on —

AMATEUR IN CHANCERY

61

“surely there must be some com-
mon reference there, even grant-
ing that perception isn’t eye-
sight. So how does perception
work?”

“Tom, if you were blind from
birth, I could tell you that I have
eyesight that permits me to see
the details of things that you can
determine only by feeling them.
This you might understand basi-
cally. But you could never be
made to understand the true def-
inition of the word ‘picture’ nor
grasp the mental impression that
is generated by eyesight.”

“Well,” I persisted, “can he pen-
etrate flesh?”

“Flesh?”

“Holly’s heart has stopped,” I
said. “But it hasn’t been removed.
If Harla can perceive through
human flesh, he might be able to
perceive the large, single organ
in the chest cavity near the
spine.”

Teresa said, “Harla’s percep-
tion gives him a blurry, incom-
plete impression,” She looked at
me. “It is something like a badly
out-of-focus, grossly under-ex-
posed x-ray solid.”

“X-ray solid?” I asked.

“It‘s the closest thing that you
might be able to understand,” she
said lamely.

I dropped it right there. Teresa
had probably been groping in the
dark for some simile that would
convey the nearest possible im-

pression. I felt that this was going
to be the nearest that I would
ever get to understanding the
sense of perception.

“Can’t he get a clear view?”
“He has not the right.”

“Right!” I exploded. “Why — ”
Wallach held up his hand to
stop me. “Don’t make Teresa
fumble for words, Tom. Harla has
not the right to invade the person
of Holly Carter. Therefore he can
not get a clearer perception of her
insides.”

“Hell!” I roared. “Give Harla
the right.”

“No one has authority.”
“Authority be dammed!” I bel-
lowed angrily. “That girl’s life is
at stake!”

Vj^ALLACH nodded unhappily.

» ▼ “Were this a medical emer-
gency, a surgeon might close his
eyes to the laws that require au-
thorization to operate. But even
if he saved the patient’s life, he is
laying himself open to a lawsuit.
But this is different, Tom. As you
may know, the ability of any psi-
person is measured by their wel-
come to the information. Thus
Teresa and Harla, both willing to
communicate, are able.”

“But can’t Harla understand
that the entire bunch of us are
willing that he should take a
peek?”

“Confound it, Tom, it isn’t a
matter of our permission! It’s

62

GALAXY

a matter of fact. It would ease
things if Holly were married to
one of us, but even so it wouldn’t
be entirely clear. It has to do with
the invasion of privacy.”

“Privacy? In this case the very
idea is ridiculous.”

“Maybe so,” said Paul Wallach.
“But I don’t make the rules.
They’re natural laws. As immu-
table as the laws of gravity or the
refraction of light. And Tom,
even if I were making the laws I
might not change things. Not even
to save Holly Carter’s life. Be-
cause, Tom, if telepathy and
perception were as free and un-
bounded as some of their early
proponents claimed, life would
be a sheer, naked hell on earth.”
“But what has privacy to do
with it? This Harla isn’t at all
humanoid. A cat can look at a
king — ”

“Sure, Tom. But how long
would the cat be permitted to
read the king’s mind?”

I grunted. “Has this Harla any
mental block about examining the
outside?”

He looked at me thoughtfully.
“You’re thinking about a scar or
some sort of blemish?”

“Yes. Birthmark, maybe. No
one is perfect.”

“You know of any?”

I thought.

It was not hard for me to con-
jure up a picture of Holly Carter.
Unfortunately, I looked at Holly

Carter through the eyes of love,
which rendered her perfect. If she
had bridgework, I hadn’t found it
out. Her features were regular
and her hair fell loose without a
part. Her complexion was flaw-
less ... at least the complexion
that could be examined whilst
Holly sunned herself on a deck
chair beside the swimming pool.

I shook my head. Then I faced
an unhappy fact. It hurt, because
I wanted my goddess to be per-
fect, and if she were made of
weak, mortal flesh, I did not want
to find it out by asking the man
who knew her better than I did.

Still, I wanted her alive. So I
turned to Frank Crandall.

“Do you?” I asked.

“Do I what?”

“Know of any scars or birth-
marks?”

“Such as?”

“Oh, hell,” I snapped. “Such as
an appendix scar that might be
used to tell left from right.”

“Look, Tom, I’m not her phy-
sician, you know. I can only give
you the old answer: ‘Not until
they wear briefer swim suits.’ ”

My heart bounced lightly.
That Holly was still in mortal
danger was not enough to stop
my elation at hearing Frank
Crandall admit that he was not
Holly’s lover, nor even on much
better terms than I. It might have
been better to face the knowledge
that Holly was all woman and all

AMATEUR IN CHANCERY

63

human even though the informa-
tion had to come from someone
who knew her well enough to get
her home.

Then I came back to earth. I
had my perfect goddess — in
deadly peril — instead of a hu-
man woman who really did not
belong to any man.

TT HADN’T seen Saul Graben,

leave, but he must have been
gone because now he opened the
door and came back. He was
carrying a heavy rim gyroscope
that was spinning in a set of
frictionless gymbals. He looked
most confused.

He said, “I’ve spent what seems
like an hour. You can’t tell me
that this gizmo is inseparable
from the selfish, insular intellect
of terrestrial so-called homo
sapiens.”

He turned the base and we all
watched the gymbal rings rotate
to keep the gyro wheel in the
same plane. “It should be cosmic,”
he said. “But every time I start,
I find myself biting myself on the
back of the neck. Look. If you
make the axle horizontal in front
of you and rotate the gyro with
the top edge going away from
you, you can define a common re-
ference. But motion beyond that
cannot be explained. If the axle
is depressed on the right side, the
gyro will turn so the far edge
looks to the right. But that’s de-

fining A in terms of A. So I’m
licked.”

Frank Crandall shook his head.
“There’s probably an absolute to
that thing somewhere, but I’m
sure none of us know it. We
haven’t time to find it. In fact, I
think the cause is lost. Maybe
we’d better spend our time figur-
ing out a plausible explanation.”
“Explanation?” blurted Wal-
lach.

“Let’s face it,” said Crandall.
“Holly Carter’s life is slipping
away. No one has yet come close
to finding a common reference to
describe right from left to this
Harla creature.”

“So what’s your point?”
“Death is for the dying,”
Crandall said in a monotone. “Let
them have their hour in peace and
dignity. Life is for the living, and
for the living there is no peace.
We who remain must make the
best of it. So now in about five
minutes Holly will be at peace.
The rest of us have got to answer
for her.”

“How do you mean?”

“How do you propose to ex-
plain this unfortunate incident?”
asked Crandall. “Someone will
want to know what happened to
the remains of Holly Carter. I can
see hell breaking loose. And I can
see the whole lot of us getting
laughed right off the Earth be-
cause we couldn’t tell right from
left. And I can see us all clob-

64

GALAXY

bered for letting the affair take
place.”

“You seem to be more worried
about your professional reputa-
tion than about Holly Carter’s
life!”

“I have a future,” he said.
“Holly doesn’t seem to. Hell,” he
groaned, “we can’t even gamble
on it.”

“Gamble?”

“How successful do you think
you’d be in getting this Venusian
to risk his life by closing his eyes
and making a fifty-fifty stab in the
dark at one of those buttons?”

“Well — ” started Wallach —
“we’d be gambling too, you know.
But — ”

VVyAIT a moment,” I said. “I’ve
got a sort of half-cracked
theory. May I try?”

“Of course.”

“Not ‘of course.’ I’ll have to
have quiet, with just Teresa to
communicate through.”

“If you have any ideas, try
them,” said Wallach.

“Do you really know what
you’re doing?” demanded Frank
Crandall.

“I think so,” I replied. “If it
works, it’ll be because I happen to
feel close to Holly.”

“Could be,” he said with a
shrug. I almost flipped. Duels
have been fought over less. But
instead of taking offense, Cran-
dall topped it off by adding, “You

could have been a lot closer if
you’d tried. She always said you
had the alert, pixie-type mind
that was pure relaxation instead
of a dead let-down after a period
of deep concentration. But you
were always scuttling off some-
where. Well, go ahead and try,
Tom. And good luck!”

I took a deep breath.

“Teresa?” I asked.

“Yes, Mr. Lincoln?”

“Tell Harla to concentrate on
the buttons.”

“He is.”

“There is a subtle difference
between them.”

“This he knows, but he does
not know what it is.”

“There is a delicate difference
in warmth. One button will be
faintly warmer than the other.”
“Harla has felt them.”

I dropped the third-person
address and spoke to Teresa as if
she were but one end of a tele-
phone line. “Harla,” I said, “only
part of the difference lies in the
warmth to physical touch. There
should be another kind of
warmth. Are you not affected by
a feeling that one is better than
the other?”

Harla’s reply came direct
through Teresa: “Why yes, I am
indeed drawn to the warmer of
the two. Were this a game I would
wager on it. But that is emotion
and hardly suitable as a guide.”
“Ah, but it is!” I replied

AMATEUR IN CHANCERY

65

quickly. “This is our frame of ref-
erence. Press the warmer of the
but — ”

I was violently interrupted.
Wallach shook me violently and
hurled me away from Teresa.
Frank Crandall was facing the
girl, shouting, “No! No! The warm
one will be the red one! You must
press the green — ”

And then he, too, was interrup-
ted.

Displaced air made a near-
explosive woosh! and the tunnel
car was there on its pad. In it was
a nightmare horror holding a limp
Holly Carter across its snakelike
tentacles. A free tentacle opened
the door.

“Take her while I hold my
breath,” said Harla, still talking
through Teresa. “I’ll return the
tunnel car empty. I can, now that
I know that warmth is where the
hearth is.”

Harla dropped the unconscious
girl in my arms and snapped
back into the car. It disappeared,

then returned empty just as the
doctor was bending over Holly.

CO now I have my Holly, but
^-'every now and then I lie awake
beside her in a cold sweat. Harla
could have guessed wrong. Just
as Wallach and Crandall had
been wrong in assuming the red
button would be warmer than the
green. Their reaction was as emo-
tional as Harla’s.

I hope Harla either forgives me
or never finds out that I had to
sound sure of myself, and that I
had to play on his emotions sim-
ply to get him to take the
fifty-fifty chance on his — hers —
our lives.

And I get to sleep only after
I’ve convinced myself that it was
more than chance . . . that some-
how our feelings and emotions
guided Harla where logic and def-
inition fail.

For right and left do not exist
until terrestrial man defines them.

— GEORGE O. SMITH

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

You Still Have Time . . .

(if you were properly prompt in picking up this issue!) to get in
your reservation for the World Science Fiction Convention. The place: Seattle,
Washington. The date: Labor Day Weekend. The address to mail your $2
registration fee to: P. O. Box 1 365, Broadway Station, Seattle 2, Washington.
It's your chance to meet, greet and vote for your favorites in the science-
fiction field. Everyone is welcome. See you there?

66

GALAXY

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Every army has one like him. He doesn't win wars —
but he can make sure the right people lose them!

THE

■ARTHMAH

By FREDERIK POHL Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS

O NE night when I was C.Q.
at the 549th, the Officer of
the Day came in, swearing,
with a tall, dark-skinned private
wandering sullenly along behind
him.

We were up to our eyeballs in
frantic work; Trenton had just
been evacuated. “Get me the M.P.
barracks,” yelled the O.D. “What
do you think? This rat’s been sell-
ing rations to the civilians.” That
was Lt. Lauchheimer, who was a
pale young man with enormous
integrity. He looked at the prison-
er as if he wanted to kick him. I
could understand that.

The prisoner looked back at
him calmly, without very much

interest at all. He leaned back
against the wall, put one elbow
on the hammering teletype and
sighed. Behind him was a poster
of a great green bug being bay-
oneted by an American infantry-
man, captioned:

SIRIANS, GO HOME!

“Sit down,” snapped Lt. Lauch-
heimer, “ — you. Whatever the
hell you said your name was.”
“He’s Private Postal, sir,” I said
reluctantly. “Pinkman W. Postal.”
The prisoner looked at me for
the first time. The orderly room
was full and bustling, so it wasn’t

68

GALAXY

surprising he hadn’t noticed me.
“Oh. Hello, Harry.”

I dialed the M.P. barracks with-
out answering him, but it was
already too late. When I handed
the phone to Lt. Lauchheimer he
glared at me. I said, “We took
basic together, Lieutenant. We,
uh — We weren’t very close bud-
dies.”

“Sergeant, I didn’t ask you.”

I listened while he was talking
on the phone, although I was sup-
posed to be checking casualty re-
ports resulting from the morning’s
assault on the Sirian bubble. It
seemed that Pinky had been
given a truckload of supplies for
evacuees and told to deliver it
to a relief center in Bound Brook.
They’d picked him up in New
Brunswick with the supplies gone
and a pocketful of cash. It was
about what I would have ex-
pected.

The M.P. jeep was there in less
than five minutes, and Lt. Lauch-
heimer escorted Pinky out with-
out another word to me. But he
didn’t forget. Two weeks later,
when we were packing up for the
move to Staten Island, he was in
charge of my section and he put
me on every rough detail he could
think of. I guess I didn’t blame
him. I would have done the same.
He didn’t know me very well, but
he knew I knew Pinky Postal.

Lauchheimer didn’t get off my
back until the Boston Retreat,

when we were bombed-in togeth-
er for twelve hours and had a
chance to talk things over. After
that we were pretty close. He
asked me to come along when he
volunteered for the Worcester
booby-trapping mission that al-
most worked, which I did, so in a
way you might say that Pinky
Postal was responsible for my get-
ting the Congressional Medal of
Honor.

I’m glad I got it. There were
fifteen awarded that day, includ-
ing mine and Lauchheimer’s.
They lined us up alphabetically,
and my name begins with a “W”.
So, although my Medal looks like
all the others, it’s pretty special.
It was the last one issued. After
that the Sirians englobed Wash-
ington.

VK/'HEN Pinky Postal got his
* ’ bright notion of selling GI
canned milk in New Brunswick
he was twenty-three years old. He
had been drafted at nineteen, out
of Cincinnati.

He hated it — hated both. He
hated being drafted; and he hated
Cincinnati. He had never done a
day’s work. He liked to drive
around down in Kentucky and
try to pick up girls, but he was
a poor man’s son. The girls were
not usually impreseed by his
wobbly old Ford. In basic train-
ing his unmade bed cost the
whole platoon a weekend pass at

THE ABOMINABLE EARTHMAN

69

Saturday inspection, so the pla-
toon gave him a bit of a hazing.
He wasn’t hurt. But the next day
he went AWOL.

He got as far as the railroad
station. He spent the rest of the
eight-week training cycle clean-
ing latrines after duty hours, and
our platoon had the dirtiest la-
trines on the post.

By the time the Sirians landed
three years later Postal should
have been out of the Army, ex-
cept that he never stopped try-
ing. He fought the Army with
everything he had. A warrant of-
ficer called him a Dutch mudheel
— well, something like that —
and Pinky hit him. That was
three months in the guardhouse
with forfeiture of pay. A mess
sergeant got somehow in the way
of a toppling vat of boiling dried
Iimas after a few words with
Pinky, who had been on KP. The
court-martial called it deliberate
assault with intent to maim.
While he was awaiting trial for
that he got out of the stockade
and went AWOL again, and . . .
add it up yourself; he had enough
bad time to keep him in as long
as they wanted him; and he was
still trying to make it up when
the Sirians blew their bubble
around Wilmington.

Pinky couldn’t have cared less.

They weren’t shooting at him,
were they? So what difference
did it make to Pinky? What was

there to choose between a hope-
lessly inimical government of hu-
man beings, whose rules were be-
yond him, and a hopelessly alien
government of green-chitoned
bugs, whose rules were never ex-
plained?

The difference was too small
for Pinky to bother with. Pinky
was as much an alien as the Siri-
ans, in his unattractive, angle-
shooting way.

But the Army still thought of
him as a soldier, after all. In the
massive redeployment that tried
to put an armed perimeter around
the bubble, Pinky found himself
put to work. He hated that most
of all.

We were throwing everything
we had at the Sirians. The troops
in Delaware and Maryland lived
in lead suits for a month because
we tried to break in with hydro-
gen bombs. All we accomplished
was to kill off every green thing
and wild animal for forty miles
south of Wilmington. The bubble
didn’t even bend, and the troops
got plenty of chance to become
pretty foul inside those suits. I
remember it very well; I was one
of them.

So was Pinky but, heavens
knows how, he managed to get
sent north. He was supposed to
be driving a truck again in the
evacuation of Philadelphia. The
place he was evacuating was Bryn
Mawr, and probably he mistook

70

GALAXY

the girls’ panic for another kind
of excitement. They screamed to
the colonel. Pinky wound up in a
punishment battalion once more,
and there he met the missionary
from inside the bubble, an exile
from Eden.

IT to me straight,
Rocco. What’s it like in
the bubble?”

“Go to hell.”

“Come on, Rocco! Look, you
don’t like working in the boiler
room, do you? Maybe I know how
we can cut out of here.”

“Shut up, Postal. The ser-
geant’s looking at us.”

Vindictively Pinky turned the
steam valve a moment before
Rocco was ready for it. The high-
temperature jet barely missed
boiling his fingers.

“What the hell did you do that
for? Get off my back, Postal!”
“Come on. What’s it like?”
“Shut up, you two! Drag tail!"
Pinky sulked. The job of de-
lousing refugee clothing took two
men, one to lift the hundred-
pound bundles in and out of the
steam boiler, one to turn the
valve. Pinky was twice the size
of the little ex-prisoner of the Sir-
ians, but it was Pinky who sat at
ease with one gloved hand on the
valve.

“Don’t you want to get out of
here?”

“Look, Postal. They won’t take

me back. Now leave me alone,
will you?”

“. . . Well, what’s it like? Do
they feed you?”

“Sure.”

“Work you hard?”

The little man said dreamily,
“There’s a stud farm down in
Delaware. Fifteen hundred wom-
en, they say. Only a couple dozen
men. For breeding, see?”

“Breeding? You mean — ”

“They’re growing slaves, I
guess. Well, I was working on a
farm and they closed that up. I
got friendly with the overseer and
he put me in for the breeding
farm. Plenty of food. Nothing else
to do. I — ”

“I’m warnin’ you two! For the
last time."

But then, after the last smelly,
flea-ridden bale had come out of
the sterilizer, Pinky had a chance
for one more word with the mis-
sionary. Why couldn’t he go back?

“Postal, I don’t want to talk
about it. They threw me out. I
was all set, passed the overseers,
right up to one of the bugs. He —
He said I was too little. They
don’t want anybody under six
feet tall.”

Back in the barracks, Pinky
slipped out of his dirty GI shoes
and painstakingly marked his
height off on the wall. The tape
measure showed that nothing had
changed. He was exactly six feet,
one and a quarter inches tall.

THE ABOMINABLE EARTHMAN

71

II

A LTOGETHER there were six
•^”*-Sirian ships that landed on
the Earth — two in Russia, one
in the United States, one in Can-
ada, one in India and, the first
one of all, one in New South
Wales. The first we heard of
them was when the Russian radio
satellite began a frantic emergen-
cy message in clear, and then
went dead before it finished. Then
all the other space stations went
dead.

Then the ship came down on
Australia and, pop, up went the
pale green bubble.

The bubbles were like a wall,
except more flexible and beauti-
fully controlled. The rule was:
What the Sirians wanted to pass
could pass; everything else could
not.

Time passed; the other ships
landed; there were more bubbles.

Then the bubbles grew bubbles.
They clustered in groups, expand-
ing. Sometimes the new bubbles
were big, sometimes small. Some-
times a couple of months would
go by without much expansion,
sometimes half a dozen little buds
would pop up in a week.

No metallic object could get
through them at all after the first
week. Evidently the Sirians had
decided that was their simplest
defense.

We tried non-metallic attacks,

of course. We drifted poison gas
and bacteria through them easily
enough. But nothing happened
as far as we could see ... as far
as we could see was, after all, only
the outermost skin of the bubble.

A man could walk through —
or most of the time he could —
without feeling a thing, as long
as he had taken off his wrist watch
and laid down his gun. Not al-
ways. I was in Camden when the
5th Mountain Division sent in an
attack with wooden spears and
pottery grenades. Fifty men got
through but the fifty-first bounced
back, knocked unconscious, as
though he’d hit a stone wall. I
don’t know what happened to the
fifty men who got through. The
only thing I’m pretty sure of is
that they didn’t much worry the
bugs.

Some people did come back.
The Sirians threw them out, like
Pinky’s missionary, Rocco. Prob-
ably the Sirians had chosen types
who would have little of impor-
tance to tell, except how much
they liked living under the Siri-
ans. That’s what they told, every
one of them.

They were a problem to the
Army. Most of them were soldiers,
as it happened. The Army didn’t
much like the idea of sending
them back to their units, whose
morale was already hanging low,
so they put the missionaries in
special battalions, along with the

72

GALAXY

goof-offs and low-grade criminals,
like Pinky Postal.

Pinky heard the message of the
missionaries loud and clear. He
didn’t like the punishment battal-
ion at all.

He got his chance when he was
handing out tetanus shots for a
line of children and a jeep skidded
in the slush, side-swiping the
medics’ personnel carrier. The
kids scattered like screaming
geese. By the time the medic
corporal got his detail rounded
up again he had only five men
instead of six.

Pinky was in the back of a
truck, heading south along the
old Turnpike. Snow was driving
down on him, but he was very
happy.

He had outsmarted the Army.
They would look for him, but
they would look North. It is al-
ways easy to desert in the direc-
tion of the enemy in wartime; the
traffic is all the other way.

He walked the last mile to the
edge of the bubble, looming over
him in the darkness like a green
glass cliff. The snow was easing
off and it was almost daylight as
he stepped through.

f T'HE Sirians never intended to
destroy the Earth, only to own
it. Pinky’s missionary was quite
right. Almost at once they began
breeding slaves.

It was exactly the sort of job

that Pinky would seek. He was
not a bookish man, but he was
immensely erudite on prurience.
He knew very well what a breed-
ing farm was like. There were the
dozens of helpless, tamable does;
and there was the big stud stal-
lion, himself. What would be
closer to the heart of any red-
blooded boy? He made his way
there, finally, very much elated.
There were fifteen others in the
shipment, all tall, heavy, muscu-
lar men, all extremely cheerful.
They rode in the back of an old
Ford pickup truck, in warm sun-
shine. They didn’t mind that it
had a purplish tinge (green,
Pinky would have thought, if he
had thought about it at all; but
the bubble reflected the green
bands of the spectrum and what
came through left the sun looking
like a violet spotlight in the sky.)
There were lavender clouds in
a mauve sky, and all around them
the bugs were busy with their re-
construction. Snow-white ma-
chines on wire-mesh treads were
neatly paving over the rubble
that had been a small Maryland
town. “Bring on the girls,” bel-
lowed Pinky, waving a bottle in
one hand. It was only California
sherry, but it was all he’d been
able to find in the abandoned
supermarket where they’d spent
che night.

“Man!” cried one of the other
eager breeders. “Women!” Pinky.

THE ABOMINABLE EARTHMAN

73

dropped the bottle in his excite-
ment, staring.

They were women, all right.
They were flat on their backs on
a grassy meadow, their legs in the
air, pumping invisible bicycle
pedals under the direction of a
husky blonde girl. “Vun, two.
T’ree, four! Vun, two. T’ree, four!
All right, ladies. Now some bend-
ing and stretching, hurry up,
yoomp!" As the breeding stock
clambered to its legs, Pinky ob-
served that they had in fact al-
ready been bred, some months
before. It was only mildly disap-
pointing. Where these were, there
were bound to be others.

The truck slowed and stopped,
and Pinky saw his first Sirian.

The creature was twelve feet
high but flimsily constructed. It
had a green carapace like a June
bug’s, jointed in the center. It was
not paying any attention to the
snorting volunteer stallions. It
stood on four hind legs, holding
in its front pair of legs an instru-
ment like a theodolite. (It had
two smaller pairs of legs clasped
across its olive-colored belly
plate.)

“Out! Everybody out!” bawled
a man in a green brassard, circling
respectfully around the Sirian
toward the truck. “Nip along,
you!”

Pinky was first off, and first to
reach the man in the green bras-
sard. He had at'that time been in

the bubble for less than thirty-six
hours, but he knew who to butter
up. Green brassards were over-
seers. They were the human
straw-bosses for the Sirians. “Ex-
cuse me, sir. Say. I happened to
get some good cigars last night,
and I wondered if you . . . ?”

r |^HE Sirians were not hard
masters, but they were firm.
They knew what they wanted in
the way of a slave population —
strength, size, stupidity — and it
was only a detail that they found
it necessary to kill some of those
who gave them trouble. The
trouble did not have to arise from
viciousness. As Pinky Postal was
entrenching himself with the man
in the green brassard, one of the
other candidate breeders made
the mistake of gawking too close
to the Sirian, who moved, which
startled the captive, who brushed
against the horny edge of green
chiton at the Sirian’s tail. It was
like green fire. The man did not
even make a sound. Washed in a
green blaze of light, he froze,
straightened and fell dead.

At about that time the first
dead Sirian fell into our hands —
partly because of Lt. Lauchhei-
mer and myself — and we had a
chance to discover what the green
fire was. Not that it helped us. It
was a natural defense, like the
shock of an electric eel; electro-
magnetic, at neural frequencies, it

74

GALAXY

paralyzed life. Nothing else. It
would not set off a match or stir
a cobweb, but it would kill.

Pinky did not know this, but
he knew what he had already
known, that the Sirians were
deadly. Shaken, he waited for the
physical examination.

The overseer was not kind to
Pinky because of the gift of ci-
gars. He knew that kindness was
not involved; it was a simple
bribe. But as he shared Pinky’s
code he repaid the bribe. He did
not volunteer information, but he
answered questions. Would all of
them be kept for breeding stock?
“God, no. Six jobs want to be
filled, the rest of you go back.”
Was there any special trick to
passing the examination? The
overseer jerked his thumb at a
door labeled: Dr. Lessard. “Up to
the doc.” And was it really what
they said, inside, all girls and fun?
The overseer laughed and walked
away. There had only been two
cigars.

The doctor had overheard part
of the conversation. He was hu-
man, a dark little man with a
dark little mustache. “I give you
one piece of advice,” he said
grimly, “stay away from Billings.
What? Billings — him; the man
you were talking to. He’s been
working for the bugs since they
landed in Australia.”

Pinky said, “But aren’t you
working for them?” The doctor

did not answer, unless the extra,
unnecessary twist of the blood-
sampling needle was an answer.
There were a lot like the doctor
in the bubbles — policemen, doc-
tors, a few elected officials of
towns, who saw only one duty and
that was to continue at their jobs.
They worked for the bugs, but
not as Billings did.

Twenty minutes later the doc-
tor had completed his blood tests.
“Do I pass?” Pinky demanded
eagerly. “You know, do I get to
breed?”

The doctor looked at him
thoughtfully.

Abruptly he laughed. He
erased a little mark on the paper
and substituted another. “I think
you do,” he said.

Pinky didn’t understand the
doctor’s laughter for several
hours.

Then the five of the lot who
had been selected were led into
a long, narrow, white room with
a bank of refrigerators against
one wall and a remarkable quan-
tity of test-tubes, flasks, glass tub-
ing and other chemical-looking
instruments on benches against
the other. The five potent studs
stared at each other, until a sour-
faced human male, wearing a lab-
oratory smock, came reluctantly
in to start them on their duties.

There was a storm of questions;
the man said, “Oh, shut up, all of
you. I hate this job.”

THE ABOMINABLE EARTHMAN

75

"V/f EANWHILE there was a war
on, and we were losing it.

I don’t know all the battles that
were fought, I only know we
didn’t win them. I saw the atomic
cannon on Cape Cod, I heard
about the George Washington’s
attempt to penetrate the Atlantic
Coast bubble, which resulted in
its flooding and sinking in a hun-
dred fathoms of water. We heard
that the Russians had managed to
penetrate with a plywood missile,
built with a ceramic skin and
guided by a human kamikaze vol-
unteer. There was a latrine rumor
that the Canadians got through
with a whole squadron of gliders.
But whatever results were
achieved were invisible from out-
side the bubbles.

The one small victory that
went to the human race came
through Lt. Lauchheimer and my-
self. We buried ourselves in a
little cave off a railroad tunnel,
just outside Worcester, Massa-
chusetts. We were there four
weeks before the Sirians got
around to expanding the bubble
to include us. They finally did;
and the gamble paid off.

We were inside the bubble with
a live bomb.

According to Intelligence, its
information derived from correla-
ting the accounts of returned mis-
sionaries, our target was a Sirian
scout vessel in the mathematical
center of the sphere; blow that

76

gm

Ifc ■ ■

up, and the bubble would burst.
We did. It did. We traveled at
night and never saw a Sirian. At
night the bubble was a wet-look-
ing, faintly luminous lavender
shroud. Lauchheimer had a porta-
ble electronic gizmo which trian-
gulated the center for us. We
found the center, located the ship,
fused the bomb, had an hour to
get away, did . . . and saw, in the
first rays of the morning sun, a
great mushrooming cloud that
rose into a blue, bubble-free sky.

Paratroopers captured four live
Sirians; eight others were found
dead from the blast.

That was what gave Lauch-
heimer and me our Congressional
Medals.

The hostages didn’t stay with
us very long. They were brought
to Washington too, for study. Ten
minutes after we got our Medals
— flicker, whine — there was a
sudden surge of color and a dis-
tant sound; the sun outside the
White House window went pur-
ple and we were all caught.

Some months after that I found
myself sharing a kennel with
Pinky Postal.

Ill

T HAD NOT expected to see him
there, though I suppose I
could have guessed it. I knew
more than he, though. I knew that
the Sirians’ idea of breeding was

by no means the joyous sport that
had inspired troubadors and axe-
killings for thousands of years.
After all, we use artificial insemi-
nation on our domestic animals,
why should the Sirians be less
efficient?

I knew enough, in fact, to have
tried to avoid the breeding farm,
for more reasons than one. Des-
tiny makes games of our inten-
tions; I was selected out of a
thousand casual laborers in the
work camp near Bethesda, and
trucked to the farm overnight.

Pinky was thin, pale, trembling.
He recognized me at once. “Help
me, Harry! I got to get out of
this place.”

I looked around the place. It
had been the Bethesda Naval
Hospital at one time, with
changes made by the bugs. It was
now one enormous lying-in home,
with beds for eighteen hundred
women, dormitories for thousands
more in the grounds around, and
a special small detention home
for we fortunate donors. “You got
what you wanted, didn’t you?” I
said.

Pinky had lost forty pounds,
and there was no more flesh on
his arms than on a spider crab’s,
but he surprised me. Without a
word he jumped at my throat.

I beat him off with difficulty.
“All right! It was a joke.”

He slumped in a heap, whining,
“Oh, Harry! I been here fourteen

78

GALAXY

months and one of the bug boys
tells me I have a hundred and
twenty-three kids already, and
more on the way, and — And, I
swear, the closest I’ve been to a
woman is looking at them out the
window. You know what?
They’ve got some of my —
They’ve got samples, you know,
in the deep freeze. They could
kill me tomorrow and I’d go
right on having kids for maybe
twenty years. Harry! I didn’t
know it would be like this at all.”
I left him and looked out the
window. There was an exercise
yard, a mess hall, a community
shower — and a wall. Donors
were not allowed outside of it.

I said, “You ought to feel hon-
ored. There are only ten of these
stud farms in the world.”

“And they’re all the same —
all this artificial insemination?”
“All exactly the same, Pinky.
I’m sorry.” That was a lie, of
course — about being sorry; why
would anyone waste compassion
on Pinky Postal? But I was com-
mitted to telling lies. I could not
trust him with the truth.

“Maybe it will work out all
right,” I said vaguely, reassuring
not him but myself.

It had to. Something had to.
Of the twenty-five of us who were
abruptly sworn in as intelligence
officers when the bubble closed in
over Washington — the last real
hope of any organized effort

against the bugs — I was pretty
sure that I was the only survivor.

nPHE only hope of accomplish-
ing anything against the Siri-
ans lay in the possibility of de-
stroying their central high com-
mand which was not a Sirian, or
at any rate not an organic Sirian,
but a machine. A computer. It did
not rue them, but it detailed their
plans.

There was a chance, said the
general who swore us in, that if
we destroyed the computer they
would be confused and weakened,
then we might get at them with
conventional arms.

I followed Pinky’s example
and made friends with the man
in the green brassard, Billings. I
had no cigars. “I want to help
you,” I told him.

“My oath.” He sat down with
contempt and lit a cigarette with
loathing. “You chaps get queerer
every day.” '

I wheedled, “You never know,
Billings. They might put you on
stud any day.”

“Too true.” But it had shaken
him. “And what can you do to
stop them?”

I built a dream castle for him.
“I have something they want, Bill-
ings. I can tell you about some-
thing the bugs will want to know.”

Scornfully:- “Hell! There isn’t
anything they want to know.
They’ve a shootin’ big machine

THE ABOMINABLE EARTHMAN

79

that tells them everything they
need.”

“But the machine only knows
what it’s told. There’s something
the bugs have never known to
tell it.”

He looked impresed for a mo-
ment. “Dinkum? But — ” Then he
shook his head. Casually he
flicked ashes on my shoe. “I
know what you’re up to. You fel-
lows are always coming to me
with crook stories about how this
is going to help me and that’s
going to save my life. It’s no good.
You can’t fool me, cobber. And if
you could, I can’t fool them.”

I said persuasively, “Let me
try, won’t you? It’s a matter of
human nature.”

“What is?”

“What information they’ve
given the computer. You were
caught in the first landing, weren’t
you? Don’t you remember what
happened? They took a hundred
men and women and subjected
them to tests; the results made
up a profile of human psychology
for their computer.” He nodded,
watching me. “But they didn’t
have a Pinky Postal.”

jOILLINGS said positively, “I
don’t know what the hell
you’re talking about.”

But gradually I worked him
over. I had to. Pinky was my
ticket to the Sirian central head-
quarters. What I could accom-

plish there I did not know, but I
knew that nothing at all could be
accomplished on the stud farm.
Besides, the argument was plaus-
ible — if not to Billings, then it
would be to a Sirian. For what
I had said was true. Their data
was biased in favor of decent hu-
man beings, for their first captives
were those who stood and fought.
“Sure you know what you’re
talking about, pal?”

“I’m sure.”

“You’re not just sore because
they wouldn’t let you in with the
sheilas?”

“I’m looking for a way out of
here, Billings. That’s all. Think
it over. You’ll see I’m right.
They’ll reward you.”

He looked at me with contemp-
tuous eyes. “You don’t know much
about them, do you? But prob-
ably they won’t hurt me. Worth
a try, no doubt. . . .” He said
thoughtfully: “They’ll be wild as
cut snakes if this isn’t right. And
I’ll be wild at you.” But he finally
gave in.

Pinky was pathetic in his grati-
tude. I was his only friend. He
would never forget me; and, say,
come to think of it, I was getting
a break out of this too, wasn’t I?
How about giving him first pick
of the food, for instance, or would
I rather that he told the Sirians
he couldn’t react properly to their
tests with me along?

He was reacting exactly prop-

80

GALAXY

erly, of course. But the trouble
was the Sirians had their own
ideas. Billings brought us down
to the big barn where the only
Sirian for miles around sometimes
stopped by to check performance
at the stud farm and, after waiting
for some hours, the Sirian ap-
peared. Billings, trembling, tried
to explain what it was I had said.
The Sirian grasped the idea very
quickly; my promise was kept;
the Sirian took the bait. He said
something into a small spherical
contraption he wore dangling
from one middle leg and in a
moment there was a Sirian plane,
and Pinky and Billings were
herded into it.

Just them. Not me.

For me it was back to the stud
farm. Pinky had been my ticket
to the headquarters and the ticket
had just been punched.

r pHE main Sirian headquarters
on North America was in
Maryland, on the site of what had
once been the Bowie race track.
Off to the south lay the horse
barns. Where the grandstand and
track itself had been, now trace-
lessly slagged over, stood the
Sirian construction that they had
flung up around their ship.

The building looked like a
castle, worked like a palace. A
palace is more than a home; it is
workshop and office, an adminis-
trative center; so was this. But

it did have a resemblance to a
medieval castle, at least from a
great enough distance in the air.
There were things like towers and
things like battlements. Closer up
the resemblance was gone. The
lobed wall that surrounded it was
not for defense, as in a castle; it
was the Sirian equivalent of a
garage, where their ground and
air vehicles were kept. The towers
were viewless, except at the very
top, where sweeping silvery nee-
dles performed a function like
radar’s.

Pinky and the Aussie came to
it with suspicion and delight. Any-
thing was better than the stud
farm.

Or almost anything. But un-
deniably this was queer. They
were sent to a hexagonal green-
on-green room, small, bedless.
Billings spat on the floor when he
saw it. But even that satisfaction
was denied him. The floor shim-
mered, the saliva collected in
quicksilvery beads and trembled
toward an almost invisible slit,
where it vanished. Pinky said,
“You don’t like the accommoda-
tions?”

“It ain’t Darling Point,” said
Billings. “You know what I wish?
I wish that pal of yours was here.
I’ve a notion of something I want
to say to him.”

But Billings had only been a
strawboss at the stud farm, Pinky
had actually been one of the

THE ABOMINABLE EARTHMAN

81

studs. “It’s not so bad,” he said
with cheerful confidence, “and
anyway we’ll make out. Or I will.”
He hesitated and said: “You
won’t believe this, but I wish
there were some women here.”

The Sirians wasted no time.
Considering the limitations placed
on their researches by the lack of
unimpeded communication (no
human ever learned the Sirian
speech, and they could manage
human tongues only through a
sort of vodor), they were thor-
ough and complete. None of it
made much sense to Pinky, of
course. All he knew was that he
and Billings were bored, annoyed
and persecuted for twelve hours
at a time with endless nibbling
nuisances. Word associations, re-
flex tests, interpretive depth
studies much like a Rorschach —
the works. “There’s not much in
being a guinea pig,” sighed Bill-
ings, exhausted and angry.

“Would you rather be a stud?”
asked Pinky, very cheerfully. He
was quite happy. He had dis-
covered an angle to shoot.

IV

nPHE heart of the Sirian head-
quarters was a room thirty
feet tall, a hundred feet square,
lighted with a sourceless green
glow and inhabited at all times
by several dozen of the bugs.

Pinky had seen the room from

a gallery above it. The results of
his tests and Billing’s were fed
into receptors in a little room just
off the great one. It was there,
banked like a horseshoe along
three walls, that the central com-
puter whispered and glowed.

The Sirians did not trouble
with electricity in its grosser
forms. The computers operated
on what seemed to be neural im-
pulses, projecting their data on
soft green-ivory breast-shaped
bosses in letters of light. There is
very much about those computers
which is mysterious, but some
things are sure: For one, at least
a hundred problems could be
worked and answered simultane-
ously, so that the feat of juggling
Pinky’s personality quirks into
the standard human profile could
go on whenever convenient to the
bugs, without interrupting the cal-
culation of Hohmann trajectories
for the remainder of their fleet
(then approaching Orbit Pluto),
the logistics of their Canadian en-
terprise, the setting of breeding
quotas and the computation of
field strengths for each bubble in
their chain.

Not all of the answers were ex-
pressed numerically; some were
translated directly into action in
their factories; some were ex-
pressed visually. In the center of
the room, for instance, was what
(although Pinky could not have
recognized it) was a situation

82

GALAXY

map. The chart was of North
America, but as the human con-
vention of portraying bodies of
water as featureless plains was
not followed by the Sirians, Pinky
could make of it nothing but a
scramble of topography, as mean-
ingless to him as the chart of the
back side of the Moon.

If Pinky had had the wit to
understand what he saw even he
might have been shocked. The
circles of Sirian bubbles were
etched in fire. They had grown —
how they had grown! All the
Eastern seaboard was a string of
fat Sirian beads now, and a
beaded limb swung west as far as
the featureless plain of Ohio. The
last quick sproutings of bubbles
had taken in and neutralized four
Army Corps areas, eight SAC
bases, the manufacturing centers
of most of the eastern half of the
continent and every center of
population of importance north of
Savannah and east of the Great
Lakes. There was very little left.

Pinky Postal saw all that with-
out comprehending. Or caring.

What he comprehended very
clearly was that in the hours
when he was not under scrutiny
he was allowed to do as he liked.

The Sirians were not careless,
they were merely confident. They
had every reason to be. The few
hundred humans at liberty within
the headquarters had no weapons.
All of them combined were no

match for a single bug, who could
effortlessly destroy them one
after another at will. There was
little prospect of effective sabo-
tage in the areas available to the
captives. Most rooms were fea-
tureless dormitories, halls, exer-
cise areas, yards. The workshops
and armories were closed to
humans. The few chambers which
had any strategic importance —
principally the computer room —
were never left untended.

Pinky restlessly prowled the
headquarters and the abandoned
human buildings surrounding it.
He found treasures — in the old
jockey’s quarters, a wicker basket
of champagne; in the Steward’s
office, a tin box full of money.

He waved the hundred-dollar
bills in Billing’s face, but the Aus-
sie only snarled, “What’s the use
of that?”

“Oh, cheer up,” said Pinky dis-
passionately. “What’s the use of
anything? But money’s always
good. You’ll see.”

“I’ll see we’ll spend the rest of
our lives whingeing about here,”
groaned Billings. He had become
very morose. He almost stopped
eating and, as days passed,
stopped speaking. In the tests he
failed to cooperate.

Not Pinky. Pinky was a model
of cooperation. He had learned
that the way to get along with the
bugs was to do what they wanted,
and he was not surprised when

THE ABOMINABLE EARTHMAN

83

one night as the tests were con-
cluded Billings was detained.
Pinky walked slowly toward their
room, and did not even look back
when from behind him he caught
a flash of silent green light and
heard a sharp, panicky sound
from Billings, then silence. Too
bad. But Pinky had his plans.

BY THEN I was in the hills
around Frederick, Maryland,
with the freedom forces.

Well, we called ourselves that,
for morale mostly; but actually
my work lay mostly in nurse-
maiding chitinous young Waldo,
our ace of trumps.

I had not escaped from the
breeding farm, I had been liber-
ated. A fire and noise woke us
donors one night; we saw human
figures dancing around the flame
of burning buildings, and in the
confusion the raiders broke into
our close-penned corral and led
us away. It was none too soon for
me, and I was not only grateful,
I was astonished. For these were
free men and women living under
the bubbles!

It was inconceivable, but there
they were.

Undoubtedly the Sirians could
have hunted us down, but they
didn’t bother. Probably there
were too many humans loose
under their screens, like silverfish
in an old house. They had ways
of locating weapons as long as

there was a metallic component
like the barrel of a gun or shaft
of a knife — magnetic or elec-
tronic detectors, no doubt — but
while we kept free of metal they
never troubled us.

So our weapon was the torch.

We killed bugs, too. We fried a
dozen one night in firing a stand
of yellow pine where they were
— I don’t know; perhaps camping.
We clubbed a few, killed some
from a distance with bow and
arrow. Strike and run, we must
have destroyed fifty of them in
six months. That was not a small
number. It was more than one
per cent of all the Sirians on
Earth.

It was relatively easy for us to
move about because the expand-
ing bubbles had swept so much
of the human race ahead of them.
The towns were deserted. The
bug centers were easy to avoid.
All of North America was now
under the green umbrella; a
mauve sun sailed over all of
Europe and most of Asia. We
learned, through such sparse com-
munications facilities as were left
to us, that Africa and South
America were largely bug-free.
Evidently the warmer parts of the
Earth were not attractive to the
Sirians. They were now a sort of
game preserve, nearly all that
survived of humanity packed
into those two continents, almost
two billion people crowded into

84

GALAXY

the malarial Amazon basin and
the hot savannahs of the Congo.

So we crept about under their
feet and stung them when we
could. We became ingenious in
setting snares. With the high-
octane gasoline from an aban-
doned storage tank we washed
one of their landing strips one
night, and set it ablaze just as
one of their gull-winged flyers
came in. The intention was to in-
cinerate them all, and then for us
to vanish tracelessly; but the Siri-
an pilot saw danger at the last
moment and almost soared free.
The flames caught him, and the
ship pinwheeled into the side of a
hill. And that was very fortunate
for us, because that was how we
captured Waldo.

T¥7ALDO was a small, dark-
green creature the size of a
puppy, newly hatched and not
very dangerous.

He was our first living Sirian
captive. We dared take time to
poke about in the wreck of the
plane, knowing that there would
be investigation, and we found
that only two of its crew were
adult Sirians; the others were
eggs or hatchlings. The crash had
killed them handsomely. All but
one. John Gaffney found the one;
rummaging through the dark he
suddenly screamed: “The little
louse! He bit me!” But it wasn’t
a bite, it was a neural shock. It

was Waldo. He was alive. As he
was only a newborn, his shock
was painful but not deadly.

We roped him and dragged
him out onto the side of the hill.
In the light of a quarter million
burning gallons of gasoline,
pinned on his back with ten legs
waving, he did not seem danger-
ous, only comic. “Kill him,” said
Gaffney, rubbing his leg.

“No.” I had a better idea.
“They’ll never miss him. Why
don’t we keep him? He can be —
We can use him for — ”

“What?” demanded Gaffney.
“No, kill him!” But I had my way
finally. We had no plan for a
captive Sirian, because it had
never occurred to us we might
catch one. But surely something
would turn up!

So we swung him in a ham-
mock and lashed him tight, and
we got out of there minutes before
the Sirian rescue parties were
circling the sea of flame.

It was months before we had
any idea of what to do with him.
As I had insisted on kidnapping
him, he was given me to raise.
This was not pleasant. He was a
painful pet, and difficult to
handle.

I mention only the difficulty of
feeding him. Infant Sirians were
nurtured on a sort of nectar,
probably once secreted by Sirian
adults but now, in their dwellings,
synthesized in quantity. We had

THE ABOMINABLE EARTHMAN

85

none. We tried everything. Honey
was good but hard to come by.
Molasses made him drunk. Sim-
ple sugar solution he refused to
touch. We finally settled on maple
syrup with, after experimenting,
a few drops of whiskey.

On this he thrived. I deter-
mined to try to teach him Eng-
lish.

I could not hope that he would
ever speak it, but neither can a
dog. He was much brighter than
a dog. “Walk,” “sit,” “come” —
he learned those before he was
a month old. He showed that he
could learn much more.

In the winter evenings he
would cuddle in my lap and we
would look at the pictures in
magazines together, I pointing
out “car” and “house” and “wash-
ing machine” and Waldo reaching
out with a jointed, taloned leg to
scratch at the picture on the
page. He made a faint humming
sound, and his hardening chiton
was rather warm. I grew almost
fond of him, he was so eager to
learn. Yet I was kept from over-
sentimentality by the potent sting
he carried with him always. He
would fall asleep in my lap. Just
as a human child will restlessly
turn over a time or two before
drifting off, so Waldo would emit
one sleepy shock before the black,
hard eyes unfocused and he went
into the catalepsy that was their
sleep.

As he grew larger (and he grew
astonishingly fast), those light
love-pats in good night became
more and more agonizing. Twice
I was knocked unconscious.

We tried insulation. We
wrapped him in rubber sheets,
shrouded him in layer on layer
of quilts. We tried keeping him
off my lap, merely close by on a
couch. Nothing worked. Always
he drowsily reached out with one
leg or an eyestalk or the corner
of his backplate, just before he
drifted off. And I leaped half out
of my skin.

(TKN CHRISTMAS day of the
second year of the Sirian con-
quest, Gaffney brought us a new
recruit.

I was not present when she
arrived — I was out exercising
Waldo, under the shelter of an
overgrown old apple orchard —
and I missed the questioning. By
the time I got back to our camp
she was asleep, worn out, but
Gaffney was bubbling with news.

“She was actually in their
headquarters! She drew us a plan
of the whole thing, Harry — look!”
It was crude, but if the girl was
reliable it was all the information
we had hoped for. We located the
computer room, the Sirian sleep-
ing quarters, the defensive instal-
lations, the shops, the laboratories.
Slave quarters ringed one floor.
Surveillance of half a continent

86

GALAXY

was carried on in an observatory
near the top. “And look here,”
said Gaffney in excitement, “see
this line? The inner part of the
headquarters is almost independ-
ent of the rest. Double walls,
limited access, construction heav-
ier, stronger inside. What does
that suggest?” I opened my
mouth. “A ship!” he cried, not
giving me a chance, “the central
part of the building is a ship!”

More than that, the girl had
told him that that ship housed
all the brains of the Sirian expedi-
tion. They had but one computer;
it had landed with the first touch-
down on Australia, but had been
moved to the United States. If
we could destroy that ship. . . .

“But that’s the part that wor-
ries me,” admitted Gaffney, down-
cast. “How do we get in? They
let her wander about pretty much
as she wanted, see — all the hu-
mans do. Fact, the humans are
pretty much independent, long as
they do what the bugs want. Even
have their own, well, boss, a fel-
low who — Never mind. What I
started out to say, the bugs can
afford to let the humans roam
around, because the corridors are
booby-trapped. It’s something
like Waldo’s shock. There are
places where this girl couldn’t go,
because she would die, unless a
Sirian was with her. It didn’t
bother Sirians.”

We puzzled that over for a

while. Waldo, beside me, rested
one talon gently in my hand —
he was very well behaved and
quite trustworthy except, as I
said, just as he was drifting off
to sleep. He loomed over us (be-
ing now more than nine feet tall),
staring at the scribbled map with
polite curiosity.

I turned and stared at him ab-
ruptly. “Waldo! He could help
us!” Quickly I explained. If Siri-
ans could pass the booby-traps,
why, we had our own Sirian!

I said, “We’ll have to ask the
girl. Did they carry anything
special? But she would have said
so, and I think not. I think prob-
ably their own neural shock ema-
nations screened off the radiations
from the booby traps, and if that’s
the case — ”

“Don’t guess,” said Gaffney.
“We’ve woke her up with all our
noise. Here she comes now.”

And there was the girl, coming
drowsily into the room. She
glanced toward me, stopped stark,
her hand flew to her mouth, she
screamed.

I threw a look at Waldo beside
me.

“Oh, you saw him? Don’t worry
about him, young lady! He’s per-
fectly tame. But no doubt he re-
minded you of the horrors you
suffered while the captive of the
Sirians. . . .”

She simmered down slowly,
shaking her head. “No — no. I’m

THE ABOMINABLE EARTHMAN

87

sorry to be such a fool. It isn’t
the bug I was worried about. It’s
just that seeing you standing there
that way, so close to him — well.
You scared me half to death. For
a minute,” she said with apolo-
getic embarrassment, “for a
minute I thought you were the
boss. Mr. Postal.”

V

TT'ARTH had now been con-
quered in all of its important
parts. We knew that the great
colonizing fleet that would follow
the first wave had long been orbit-
ing the sun, reducing its velocity,
knocking off miles-per-second to
match speed with the Earth and
to land.

What we did not know was
how tedious life had become for
the conquerors.

Pinky Postal, however, had
them right under his eye. He saw
how little there was for them to
do. These were soldiers, not in-
tellectuals, not artists, not even
home-builders; their work was to
fight, and they were fought out.
They had won.

Two days before Billings was
killed, Pinky caught a glimpse of
what might be. He found five
quarts of champagne and got
quite drunk. In his intoxication he
blundered where he knew he
should not go — into Sirian quar-
ters — and it was only the provi-

dence of drunks that kept him
from a booby trap, but somehow
he found himself in a small room,
where something heaved under a
tarpaulin.

It was a queer sight, and he
kicked it.

The tarpaulin flung free. There
was a high-pitched Sirian chirp,
and three great insect bodies
bounded up from the floor, where
they had been huddled. Gravely,
drunkenly, Pinky realized that he
was about to die. He had caught
them at something, heaven knew
what. And they would surely
smite him low.

As he was drunk, he merely
stood there, weaving slightly,
breathing calm alcoholic defiance
at the Sirian who bent dangerous-
ly toward him.

— But he did not die.

He did not die, and the next
morning, through the pounding
haze of his hangover, he wondered
why. There were blanks in his
recollection. But he remembered
standing there, and he remem-
bered that the killing bolt from
the Sirian had never come.

He puzzled over it for a whole
day.

Then, that evening, a Sirian
came toward him and bent low.

Pinky was not drunk this time,
and he was terrified. He tried to
run, fell, squirmed and lay flat on
his back while the great flat June-
bug face swooped down at him.

88

GALAXY

Again the bolt did not strike.

The face hung there, for
seconds and then for minutes.
And by and by Pinky saw that
the Sirian was twitching. It
twitched and stirred. Then it de-
finitely staggered. It stumbled,
caught itself, almost fell athwart
him, caught itself again. The faint
cricket-chirp sounded, ragged and
. . . and . . . drunken.

Drunken!

And Pinky, sleepless that night,
staring at the black ceiling of his
green-on-green cubicle, realized
that he had found what he
wanted.

He became a pusher. Of him-
self.

/"VF course the Sirians had their
vices. What creature does

not?

Carbon dioxide was their
liquor. Their respiratory systems
being what they were, it was only
infrequently that their own waste
gases reached their intake ori-
fices; but the concentrated breath
of a mammal could send them
reeling; a few minutes inhaling
a man’s direct breath would stiff-
en them in a giggling paralysis.

But on their planet of Sirius,
they had no mammals.

They did what they could with
what they had to work with. Their
most secret vice was bundling —
two (or, rarely and most despic-
ably, three or more) of the Siri-

ans furtively huddled under an
airtight sheet, exuding COo and
intoxicating one another. It was
a fearful vice. It was also a dan-
gerous one. It could not be prac-
ticed openly. And when done in
secret there was always the risk
that the drunks would pass out
and ultimately die of hyperintoxi-
cation.

They were not merely drupks,
they were alcoholics, a racial
characteristic; for once they had
tasted the happy-gas exuded by
gross mammalian chemistry they
were addicts. Pinky collected his
first addict by chance, but he was
courageous enough and thought-
ful enough to make more. It took
courage. It took exposing himself
to a chance bolt from a new con-
tact, but once the first few mo-
ments were past, so was the
danger. A new habit had been
formed; the pusher had hooked
a new customer. It was the sort
of industrious empire-building to
which Pinky was best fitted, for
he was perceptive to all weak-
nesses of the flesh — even chiti-
nous flesh hatched under alien,
blue-white stars.

Pinky was supply enough for
whole roomfuls of Sirians, such
clouds of intoxicant wafted from
him. As days and weeks passed,
more and more the work of the
Sirian headquarters came to re-
volve around him. The business
of occupying Earth tended itself

THE ABOMINABLE EARTHMAN

89

well enough. The quasi-radars
kept their vigil and marked their
targets, the computers never
stopped monitoring the approach
of the fleet and correcting its
course. They gave him a vodor,
so that he could talk to them
direct; he talked in commands.
They obeyed his commands, for
he was intelligent enough to bait
them. He sent them on scroung-
ing expeditions to find choice
food — a good bargain for them
for, as with Earthly topers, it was
not the simple chemical paralysis
that pleased them best but the
subtle bouquet and tang of con-
taminants. What bliss in the reek
of green onions on his breath!
What tingling thrill in the stale
scent of tobacco! They sent par-
ties rummaging through the near-
by abandoned towns, for canned
cheese and garlic, for spearmint
chewing gum and cinnamon
drops.

Food and drink supplied, he
next demanded control over the
other humans in the Sirian head-
quarters. This too they gave him
— why not? It was Pinky, after
all, who knew how to brew those
rare blends of flavor that made
all the difference. If Pinky chose
to exercise the human crew in
ways of his own, he never failed
to share their breath with his em-
ployers. For this reason the other
humans grew to hate, fear and
despise him, but they feared the

Sirians even more. Pinky was per-
fectly happy for the first time in
his life. He was not a king, he
was more.

The Sirians ruled the world.
And, in all but name, he ruled
the Sirians.

It was into this earthly paradise
of Pinky’s that we snakes wrig-
gled, bringing destruction.

HPHE rest is history: How, em-
■*- boldened by the increasing
laxity of the Sirians, we attacked
their headquarters; how Waldo, a
happy child with no consciousness
that he was betraying his race,
led us through the trapped corri-
dors into the Sirian fortress; how
we were found out by that most
Sirian of tyrants, Pinky Postal.
For it was he who spotted us. He
and his humans had ministered to
the whole headquarters detach-
ment, leaving them in a happy
stupor, when the alarm bells rang,
and though Pinky roused one of
the bugs enough to locate us, the
creature was far too tipsy to do
anything about it.

It was the end of the world for
Pinky Postal. His paradise was
over.

He confronted us at the en-
trance passage, wild with fear and
hate.

“Harry!” he bawled, screeching
with rage. “You louse! You rat!
You human!”

“Shut up,” said I, and in truth

90

GALAXY

I paid him little attention. I was
wondering where the Sirians
were. We didn’t then know that
they were all dead drunk, or al-
most all; we thought they might
come ravening down among us
with murderous shocks blazing
left and right. Pinky danced be-
fore us, almost weeping; but when
we deployed left and right, as we
had rehearsed it so many times,
he bolted away and, crash, a steel
door slammed behind him.

We invested the outer shell of
the Sirian structure with no
trouble at all. It was all too easy,
in fact. It turned out to be costly.
Fifteen of us died in the Sirian
takeoff.

Yes, the Sirian takeoff — which
so many have wondered at —
now the truth can be told. Two of
Pinky Postal’s retinue at the
last, when they saw what was
happening, fled with only seconds
to spare back to the Earth Pinky
was spurning. They told us how
Pinky, raving, strove to arouse
the bugs to destroy us; failing,
tried to get them to lock us out;
failing even in that, managed at
the last only to sober one Sirian
just enough to pull the master
switches that blasted their ship
loose from its shell, sending it
screaming up, out and away, Siri-
ans, computer, Pinky and all.

Fifteen of our raiding party
died in its rocket-flames. It was
a cheap price, of course.

But how are we to explain to
history that the Sirian conquest
of humanity was defeated not by
our strength but by our vices?

A ND when it comes to that,
J -*- what can I say to the Presi-
dent?

He is very sunburned and
healthy looking from his summer
on the Orinoco. He is a titan at
the tasks of reconstruction. Life is
almost normal again; and he as-
sures me that, with what we have
learned from the works the Siri-
ans left behind, we shall have no
trouble in fighting off their in-
vasion if they dared to attempt it
again. They left a hundred bubble
generators, and now we know how
to pierce any bubble. We have
already mopped up their survi-
vors. Young Waldo is busy every
day, trying to learn to talk to his
own kind and tell them that they
have lost a war.

Naturally, the President wants
to reward the man who made all
this possible — at, says the Presi-
dent with sorrow and pride, the
cost of his own dear life.

I wish I could stop it, but I
don’t know how. I don’t mind,
really, that mine should not be
the last Congressional Medal of
Honor after all.

But I resent it most keenly that
the next should go in absentia to
Pinky Postal!

— FREDERIK POIIL

THE ABOMINABLE EARTHMAN

91

for

information

BY WILLY LEY
THE HOME-MADE LAND

W HEN I, in January 1935,
spent two days of sight-
seeing in London, a man
who showed me around one morn-
ing proudly said: “My people
built this city.” Westminster Ab-
bey and the Houses of Parliament
looked very beautiful in the
morning sunlight of that clear
day and I fully understood how
he felt. But aside from that he
was simply speaking the truth,
cities don’t happen by themselves.
I heard a similar statement

92

GALAXY

many years later near Phoenix,
Arizona, when I was shown areas
made fertile by irrigation. The
man said: “We made this desert
into land.”

But a Dutchman — and only
a Dutchman — could go farther.
He could point to an endless
meadow, or even just to a map
of his country, and declare: “We
made this land!” He could even
add: “And we’ll make more.”

The Kingdom of The Nether-
lands, to give it its proper name,
has an area of 12,500 square
miles, as any almanac will tell
you. What the almanac usually
does not say is that if The Nether-
lands were “untouched by human
hands” some 6800 square miles
would be under water at high tide,
and would thus be uninhabitable
because the salty water of the
North Sea, if nothing else, would
ruin all edible crops.

The Dutch have literally made
half of their land themselves.
Though the history of The Neth-
erlands has its share of wars, the
main enemy since 1200 A.D. has
been the North Sea.

The main battleground was the
area of the two provinces of
North Holland and South Hol-
land. North Holland is the area
to the north of the old university
town of Leiden (after which the
Leiden, or Leyden, jars are
named), with Amsterdam in its
approximate center. The next

largest Dutch city, Rotterdam, is
the approximate center of South
Holland.

To the south of South Holland
we have the Province of Zeeland,
consisting almost exclusively of
islands. (The Dutch captain Abel
Janszoon Tasman bestowed the
name of his native province on
islands about as far away from
Zeeland as one can be, when
staying on the same planet. This
is how New Zealand got its
name.) Zeeland is the current bat-
tleground, as we’ll see; the battle
of Holland is all but won. It mere-
ly needs consolidation.

T^HE watery geography of the
-* 1 - provinces of Holland and Zee-
land is determined by three rivers,
all of which have their sources
outside the country. The north-
ernmost of the three is the Rhine
which, as it enters Dutch territory,
changes its name to Waal for a
distance of about 30 miles. After
that it is called by its original
name, but in Dutch spelling: Rijn.
(Remember Rembrandt van
Rijn?) Another arm of the
Rhine is called the Lek; but the
portion of the Lek near its mouth
is called the Nieuw Meuse. (Pre-
sumably due to an old misunder-
standing, for the Meuse, or Maas,
is the river to the south of the
Rhine which widens into the Hol-
landsch Diep before it empties
itself into the North Sea.) The

FOR YOUR INFORMATION

93

third river is the Schelde, which
begins to widen just as soon as it
has passed Antwerp.

At one time all this was under
Roman occupation, of course. It
would be most interesting if some
Roman had drawn us a map of
the country as it looked when he
was commander of a legion. Actu-
ally Roman writers say very little
about the country . . . most likely
because it wasn’t worth anything
in its natural state. Only three
classical sources are known to me,
Tacitus (in his Germania ), Pom-
ponius Mela (in his De Choro-
graphia ) and, of course, Cajus
Plinius Secundus (Pliny the
Elder) in his “Natural History”.
Pomponius Mela has just one
sentence for the current Holland:
“Then it (meaning the Rhine) is
no longer a river but an enormous
lake covering a large area, called
Fie vo.” (. . “sed ingens lacus, ubi
campos implevit, Flevo dicitur,"
if you want the original wording.)

The most accurate, as usual, is
Pliny. He states that the Rhine
in that area has three arms,
named Helium (the western-
most), Rhenus (the center arm)
and Flevum (the arm that goes
to the north.) “In the north the
Rhine widens into the lake. In the
west it empties into the Meuse.”
One of the commentators of Pliny
added that in 12 B.C. the Roman
general Drusus Germanicus (also
known as Drusus Senior) “con-

nected Flevo lake with the Rhine,
probably following the bed of the
river Yssel” (in Dutch IJssel.)

All this is not too helpful now,
but a few facts emerge.

River water made a very large
lake, probably in the southern
part of what later became the
Zuider Zee, while at least one
arm of the Rhine seems to have
merged inland with the Meuse.
The overall picture is that of an
area where a canoe was far more
useful than a horse — and which,
consequently, did not interest the
Romans. They liked firm ground
and were partial to paved high-
ways.

Since two Dutch words will
crop up all the time in what is to
follow they might as well be ex-
plained in advance. The word Zee
(pronounced Zay) refers to a
body of salt water, while the word
Meer (pronounced like “mare”)
means a body of fresh water.
This is somewhat confusing, be-
cause two German words which
look almost the same and sound
the same happen to have almost
the opposite meanings. A German
See is a fresh-water lake, if used
with the masculine article, and a
body of salt water if used with
the feminine article. And the Ger-
man word Meer means the ocean.
One sometimes feels that a good
synonym for “language” would be
“chaos.”

At any event, the Dutch

94

GALAXY

The Kingdom of The Netherlands prior to the Zuider Zee plan.

wrested land both from the salty
Zee and from freshwater Meet by
building dikes, filling in and drain-
ing. But, in spite of hard work

through many generations, the
overall balance did not look so
good. A Dutch government pam-
phlet states that between 1200

FOR YOUR INFORMATION

95

and about 1900 A. D. the Dutch
made land to the following ex-
tent:

940.000 acres along the sea-

shore

345.000 acres by draining lakes

1,285,000 acres.

But during the same time they
lost 1,400,000 acres!

The name of that loss was
Zuider Zee.

r | ''HE formation of the Zuider
Zee is easy to explain. The
whole area was below sea level
all along, with its deepest portion
filled by Flevo lake. But a great
deal of the Zuider Zee area re-
mained dry land simply because
higher land near the shore pro-
tected it from the North Sea.

The catastrophe which flooded
the low-lying basin with salt water
announced itself with a stormy
spring tide on All Saint’s Day of
1170 A. D. On that day the North
Sea tore two pieces of land from
the North Holland province,
creating the two islands of Wier-
ingen and Texel. Just about a
century later, on Christmas Day,
1277, the North Sea finally broke
through, flooding the whole area
and producing the Zuider Zee.

In 1277 nobody could even
think of doing anything about it.

But a few centuries later, pre-
sumably encouraged by success-
ful dike building on a smaller

scale, some Dutchman began to
wonder whether the work of the
North Sea might not be undone.
A study by Hendrik Stevin, pub-
lished in 1667 under the title
“How the Fury of the North Sea
may be stopped and Holland may
be protected against it” may not
have been the very first study to
consider draining of the Zuider
Zee, but it was the first to see
print. During the following 150
years the idea of reclaiming the
area covered by the Zuider Zee
was expounded quite often in the
Netherlands (some Germans also
gave good advice across the bor-
der) but it got to be a theme like
the railway tunnel from Calais
to Dover: much literature and no
action.

The reason why there was no
action was very simple: any Zui-
der Zee plan would require a
colossal investment.

If the plan succeeded this in-
vestment would be recovered and,
in time, large profits would be
made. But if it failed for any one
of a dozen different reasons the
investment would be a total loss.

In the meantime another proj-
ect simply had to be tackled.
There were two bodies of fresh
water which offered a threat to
Amsterdam, the capital. One of
them was the IJ (the Dutch treat
“ij” as one letter, hence the appar-
ent double capital in words like
IJssel; the pronunciation is sim-

96

GALAXY

ply a long I) which had an open
connection to the Zuider Zee. The
other was the H aarlemmermeer.

To get rid of the menace, the
sum of 8,355,000 guilders was
earmarked in 1837. Work began
three years later and lasted a
dozen years. The Dutch govern-
ment somewhat ruefully stated
that it had cost 13,789,377 guild-
ers. But it had been a success,
even though another 20 years of
work were needed to change the
newly won land into fruitful soil.

The Dutch name for reclaimed
land is “polder”. Reclaiming land
is therefore called by a term which
can be Anglicized as “inpolder-
ing.” While the IJ polder and the
Haarlemmermeer polder were
still wet, three scientists and en-
gineers, van Diggelen, Kloppen-
burg and Faddegon, published a
similar scheme for the Zuider Zee.
An enormous dike was to close
the mouth of the big bay, the
trapped water was slowly to be
pumped out and the two rivers
emptying themselves into the
Zuider Zee, the IJssel and the
Amstel, were to be diverted to go
into the North Sea directly.

The cost estimate was 92 mil-
lion guilders.

A S MORE and more projects
were published or submitted
to the government in the form
of memoranda, the government
felt that there should be a body

of experts which could judge the
feasibility of the various plans.
Thus an evaluation group, the
Zuiderzeevereeniging, was estab-
lished.

To see what they would get if
they did inpolder the Zuider Zee
extensive drilling was carried out.
(One source says 2188 test drill-
ings were made.) It became clear
that about three-fourths of the
area of the Zuider Zee could be
made into valuable land.

Especially three men were the
driving spirits: van Diggelen, Dr.
Cornelis Lely and the head of
the evaluation group, Dr. Buma.
A complete plan was finished in
1892. But it took time. The turn-
ing point was probably the speech
made by Queen Wilhelmina of
The Netherlands on the occasion
of the opening of parliament in
September, 1913. The speech con-
tained the sentences: “I consider
the time has come to undertake
the enclosure and reclamation of
the Zuider Zee. The result will be
improved water control conditions
in the adjacent provinces, exten-
sion of territory and a permanent
increase in the opportunities of
employment.”

If times had been normal, the
Queen’s words would probably
have caused quick action. But
times were not normal. The First
World War was brewing.

The act of parliament which
decided to attack the Zuider Zee

FOR YOUR INFORMATION

97

was passed on June 14, 1918. The
scheme to be followed was that
of Dr. Cornells Lely.

It differed from other and
earlier schemes in preserving a
body of water in the Zuider Zee
area. The older schemes had sim-
ply wanted to close up the whole
of the bay and to re-route the
rivers going into the Zuider Zee
so that they would go into the
North Sea directly. Dr. Lely
pointed out that this might lead

to floods farther inland if, as can
happen, a storm-driven flood
raises the level of the North Sea
for a few days above the level of
the rivers. This does not mean, of
course, that the level of the whole
North Sea would be above that of
the rivers; it would only be the
level of the sea near the coast.
But that is reason for disaster
enough. Moreover, Dr. Lely did
not want to kill off the Zuider Zee
fisheries. Finally, he wanted the

98

GALAXY

newly won land to be accessible
by water.

In short: instead of just drying
up the whole bottom of the bay,
a number of very large islands
were to be created in its area.

The overall scheme, then, en-
visaged first the construction of
the main dike, from the island of
Wieringen to Friesland at the
eastern shore of the Zuider Zee.
Then two large polders were to
be started, one going south from
the island of Wieringen, 49,000
acres in extent. This was first
called the northwest polder, but
later the name was changed to
Wieringermeer polder.

The other polder was to be to
the South of Friesland, the north-
east polder, 119,000 acres in ex-
tent. It is, incidentally, the only
one which has retained its original
and purely geographical name.
Then the southeast polder, the
biggest of them all (232,000
acres) was to be tackled. Since
then the name has ben changed
into Flevoland, since this is the
probable area of Flevo Lacus of
the Romans. Also, the job has
been subdivided into two phases,
East Flevoland and South Flevo-
land, though this is going to be
one polder when finished.

The last of the projected pold-
ers was the southwest polder
(150,000 acres), now called
Markerwaard.

The remaining body of water

would then have an area of nearly
250,000 acres. It had to be fairly
large to receive the waters of the
IJssel and other smaller rivers,
and because of the peculiar and
probably unique circumstance
that the salt water outside the
main dike would often have a
higher level than the water inside
the dike. No water could then be
discharged into the North Sea.
And under bad flood conditions
this might go on for some time,
so there had to be a basin to hold
the river water until it could be
discharged.

But in the course of time this
basin would become fresh water,
hence it should no longer be
called by the old name: No longer
Zuiderzee (the Dutch run words
together) but Ijsselmeer.

V^ORK started in 1927. Three
** things were tackled simul-
taneously, the main dike, the
Wieringermeer polder and a 100-
acre trial polder which was
named Andijk. The purpose of
the trial polder was to have an
experimental area for finding out
how the land had to be treated
after it had been inpoldered.

Obviously you can’t go ahead
and try to sow wheat or plant
beets on land which had been
soaking in salt water for six hun-
dred years. Incidentally, the
polders to be started later would
benefit from the gradual sweet-

FOR YOUR INFORMATION

99

ening of the Ijsselmeer, since that
would leach out salt.

By 1929 the test polder was
dry. The next task was to make it
into soil which could be useful.

At the German end of the
North Sea land had been re-
claimed from the sea in the past,
too, by inpoldering. There it had
been a rule of thumb among the
peasants that a new polder, if
kept well drained, would become
useful in six or seven years time.
In half a dozen years enough rain
fell on a polder to wash the salt
away. The Dutch presumably had
done the same in the past, but
now they were looking for meth-
ods to speed up the natural proc-
ess. Gypsum was added to the
soil, then fertilizers, different fer-
tilizers in different parts of the
test polder. Then they experi-
mented with various vegetables
to see which would succeed.

The test polder ceased to exist
as such on November 1, 1935. It
had done its job as an experimen-
tal farm. Now it became just a
farm.

By that time the main dam was
finished, too.

The island of Wieringen served
as an anchor. It had been con-
nected to the mainland with a
comparatively short dam in 1925.
The big job was the dam from
Wieringen to Friesland, 20 miles
of dam to be built right through
the sea. The bulk of the dam is

sand and earth dredged from the
sea bottom.

On the inland side the dam has
a heavy stone facing. On the sea-
ward side there is a bulge of
boulder clay. On top of this clay
bulge brushwood mattresses were
laid, made by twisting brushwood
into heavy rope-like shapes and
then weaving these “ropes” into
mattresses. On top of the mat-
tresses they dumped heavy boul-
ders, field stones, pieces of old
concrete, anything that would
weigh a lot and withstand the
pounding of the waves for an in-
definite length of time.

At first this was just hard work,
in the sense that large quantities
of clay and rocks had to be moved
and put into position. But as the
building of the dam progressed,
the space through which the tide
could flow in and out of the
Zuider Zee became narrower and
narrower and the current in the
remaining gap became more and
more violent.

The man who furnished the
necessary calculations of what to
expect of this current was Hend-
rik Antoon Lorentz, Nobel Prize
winner in Physics in 1902. As the
critical period of closing the final
gap approached, the expenditure
in men and equipment began to
resemble that for a real battle.
Ten thousand people were on the
dam. There were 27 large dredges
in action, 13 floating cranes, 132

100

GALAXY

barges and 88 tugs. The closing
of the dam was timed like an
attack. At such and such a time
the current would be near a
standstill, then were so and so
many hours for plugging the dam.
When the tide returned it had to
find a solid obstacle.

The dam was finished on May
28, 1932.

A T THAT time the polder to
the south of the island of
Wieringer, the Wieringermeer
polder, was ready to receive its
first crop. Since the area was
somewhat protected by the island

(and by the beginnings of the
big dam), this polder had been
finished in 1932. The experience
gained on the test polder enabled
the Dutch experts to make the
land arable within only two years
of its being dry.

On this polder — as well as on
the ones finished later — the
system was to divide it into plots
of roughly 50 acres. Each one of
these plots had a paved road in
front and a large canal in the
back, making it accessible both by
land and by water. Just in case
the main dam might give way, a
most unlikely thing, a terp (arti-

FOR YOUR INFORMATION

101

y^orth ^Se

102

GALAXY

Ce

ficial hill) was built in the center
of the polder. It is high enough
to be several feet above the high-
est recorded flood level of the
North Sea, and large enough to ,
protect everything on the polder
than can move and climb it.
(Somebody calculated that the ;
whole population of Amsterdam
would have standing room on top (
of the terp.) i

Two years after finishing the (
big dam work began on northeast
polder, which was ready to bear
crops ten years later, in 1942.

Naturally the soil of such a
polder is not uniform. As any- i
where else the quality varies from i
area to area. The best land of a
polder is used for vegetables, the
next best for grain (mainly rye), ]
while the poorest sections are ;
forested.

The largest of the polders, i
formerly the southeast polder, i
now Flevoland, has been divided <
into two phases. East Flevoland
was ready in 1957, South Flevo- <
land is expected to be ready in
1968. The Markerwaard polder is i
expected to be ready in 1978. <

When the Dutch started on
this enormous project in 1927 <

they probably expected, or at i
least hoped, that they could re- «
claim their Zuider Zee area in i
about half a century without hav- ’

How the Dutch made North Holland.

The polders prior to the attack on the Zuider Zee.

ing to worry about many other
things. But two major catastro-
phes happened.

The first was the German oc-
cupation of the Netherlands dur-
ing the Second World War which,
naturally, brought everything to
a near standstill, though the Ger-
mans, at first, did not interfere
directly. In fact quite a number
of German engineers looked very
carefully, if unofficially, at the
Wieringermeer polder, because
they had had a similar project in
mind since about 1932. There had
been talk about inpoldering a bay
called the Frische Haff (to the
east of Danzig) and they wanted
to see how it was done.

The Frische Haff project would
have been easier than the Zuider
Zee for several reasons. To begin
with, the bay is nearly fresh water
naturally, and because of the
geometry of the land only an
eight-mile dam would be needed.
This project, incidentally, is now
dead because the area became
Polish after the war. Of course it
may be revived as a Polish proj-
ect.

But near the end of the war the
Germans wrecked dikes deliber-
ately to protect their own retreat,
especially in the area of the Prov-
ince of Zeeland. But the dikes
wrecked by the retreating Ger-

FOR YOUR INFORMATION

103

man armies were repaired and
Zeeland lived up to its Latin
motto luctoT et emergo, “I strug-
gle and emerge.”

A FTER the damage had been
repaired most Dutchmen, in-
cluding the Zeelanders, would
concede that such things could
and would happen during a war,
but thought that everything was
fine with the dikes and the co-
existence of the North Sea and
the Kingdom of The Netherlands
otherwise. The day and night
which taught them differently
was the first day of February,
1953.

Storm conditions were unusual
and intense, the dikes of Zeeland
were breached in 67 places,
375,000 acres of land were
flooded, 9,000 buildings de-
stroyed and 38,000 more dam-
aged. The death toll was 1800
people.

The overall damage was esti-
mated at over 300 million dollars.

A Dutch agency, the Rijks-
waterstaat (we would call an
equivalent agency, if we had one,
the Federal Water Administra-
tion), had been worried all along,
and had drafted memoranda
about things that really should be
done. But their warnings had ap-
peared unnecessary.

But after the February flood of
1953 every Dutchman suddenly
realized what he had merely

learned in school, namely that 60
per cent of the kingdom’s popu-
lation live and work below sea
level. And the Rijkswaterstaafs
plan was quickly accepted.

Zeeland, as a look at the map
will show, consists of half a dozen
large and a few small islands,
grouped around four major out-
lets for river water into the sea.
But under bad storm conditions
these become four major inlets
for the sea.

To keep the islands of Zeeland
safe as they now are, some 500
miles of dikes would have to be
raised by six to seven feet, involv-
ing the reconstruction of about a
hundred locks, culverts, pumping
stations and so forth. The alterna-
tive, the Delta Plan, is just to tie
the whole complex of islands to-
gether into one land by building
a total of about 20 miles of dikes,
as sturdy as the main dam, across
the mouth of the Zuider Zee.

The first step of the Delta Plan
— now under way — is the so-
called three-island plan, a name
which is based on the fact that
once Walcheren, North Beveland
and South Beveland were three
islands.

Earlier work has already con-
nected Walcheren and South
Beveland. Then the northern-
most of those outlets, called Har-
ingsvliet, is to be dammed. The
target date is 1968. Then the
second outlet, called the Brouwer-

104

GALAXY

shavensche Gat, is to be dammed;
this dam should be completed in
1970. The next dam, and inci-
dentally the longest one in the
Delta Plan, will go across the
outlet called the Easter Schelde.
(It is called that not with the
religious holiday in mind but in
contrast to the Wester Schelde.)
It will seal it off by 1978.

The southernmost of the out-
lets, the Wester Schelde, must be
left open; there is heavy traffic
up and down the Wester Schelde
to Antwerp, which is not a Dutch
city. Here the dike along the
southern shore of Walcheren and
South Beveland will have to be
raised and strengthened. The
same is true to the north of Zee-
land. The deep channel between
Rotterdam and the sea, the so-
called Rotterdamsche Waterweg,
also cannot be interfered with, so
that a protecting dike at or near
the southern shore of the Water-
weg is indicated.

One of the reasons why the
Delta Plan was accepted so fast
and is pursued energetically is
that the storm conditions of 1953
have been carefully examined. It
turned out, to everybody’s horror,
that the 1953 situation still con-
tained mitigating factors. The
flood could have been four feet
higher than it was!

The Delta Plan is mainly de-
fensive. It is not aimed at produc-
ing much new land. But it has the

secondary aim of producing a
large fresh water reservoir. The
interconnected bodies of water
behind the Delta Plan dams are
already referred to collectively as
the Zeeuwse Meet, the Zeeland
lake.

The fact is that The Nether-
lands, which are always plagued
by too much sea water and are
seasonally plagued by too much
river water too, do need more
fresh water in midsummer. The
Zeeuwse Meer will be the irriga-
tion reservoir for these periods.

f T'HERE are two secondary
^ dams, from Duiveland to
Overflakkee and from there to
the mainland. Later on they will
carry highways, but their primary
purpose is to influence the cur-
rents in such a way that the main
dams will be easier to build.

Another part of the Delta Plan
is a most interesting construction
to the east of Rotterdam. There
is a river coming in from the east
called the Hollandsche I Jssel.
Though the name is the same it
has nothing to do with the IJssel
which puts fresh water into the
Ijsselmeer. (The latter is some-
times called the Geldersche IJssel,
to avoid confusion between the
two rivers.) What is wrong with
the Hollandsche IJssel is that it
could be a very vulnerable point
in case of a bad flood. The sea,
racing up in a tidal wave through

FOR YOUR INFORMATION

105

HI GHWAY

Cross section through the big dam across the mouth of the (former) Zuider Zee.

the Rotterdamsche Waterweg
could enter the Hollandsche
IJssel and pour into the low-lying
land to the East of Rotterdam.

What has been built is actually
an enormous guillotine, a steel
blade as wide as the river, resting
in two massive towers. If a wave
should come up the Waterweg the
steel blade can be lowered within
minutes, literally cutting off the
flood. The construction is now be-
ing finished, but as far as I know
it hasn’t been needed yet.

As has been mentioned, the
purpose of the Delta Plan is not
to make more land, but to make
the existing land safe. However,
between 25,000 and 40,000 acres
of new land will be a by-product.

Have the Dutch reached the
limit of the new land they can
make with the Delta Plan?

By no means. There is another
scheme m the future. Dutch gov-
ernment sources are careful to
point out that this is in the more
distant future — partly, no doubt,
to calm the feelings of Dutch tax
payers, partly because the Delta
Plan should be hurried with all

available means, since nobody
can tell when the next big flood
will build up.

But that “future plan” is ob-
vious from a glance at the map.
There is rather shallow water to
the north of the big Zuider Zee
dam. The Dutch call it the Wad-
denzee. To the north of the Wad-
denzee you have a chain of
islands, obviously indicating the
original coastline. A dam from
North Holland to the island of
Texel would not be longer than
the average Delta Plan dam,
though it may be more difficult
to build.

The same statement holds
true for the dams between the
islands all the way to the island
of Ameland, and a dam from
Ameland to the mainland would
be only about half the length of
the Zuider Zee dam.

One Dutch expert, Prof.
Thyse, said, “It will be done not
later than the year 2000.”

Personally I am willing to bet
that it will be long finished when
that oft-used date comes around.

— WILLY LEY

106

GALAXY

By FRANK HERBERT

Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS

Mating Call

It's a new thrill, no doubt.

But do you think it'll ever
replace old-fashioned sex?

I

’ F you get caught we’ll
have to throw you to the
wolves,” said Dr. Flad-
dis. “You understand, of course.”
Laoconia Wilkinson, senior
field agent of the Social Anthro-
pological Service, nodded her
narrow head. “Of course,” she
barked. She rustled the travel and
order papers in her lap.

“It was very difficult to get
High Council approval for this
expedition after the . . . ah . . .
unfortunate incident on Mon-
ligol,” said Dr. Fladdis. “That’s
why your operating restrictions
are so severe.”

“I’m permitted to take only
this — ” she glanced at her
papers — “Marie Medill?”

“Well, the basic plan of action
was her idea,” said Dr. Fladdis.
“And we have no one else in the

MATING CALL

107

department with her qualifica-
tions in music.”

“I’m not sure I approve of her
plan,” muttered Laoconia.

“Ah,” said Dr. Fladdis, “but it
goes right to the heart of the
situation on Rukuchp, and the
beauty of it is that it breaks no
law. That’s a legal quibble, I
agree. But what I mean is you’ll
be within the letter of the law.”
“And outside its intent,” mut-
tered Laoconia. “Not that I agree
with the law. Still — ” she shrug-
ged — “music!”

Dr. Fladdis chose to misunder-
stand. “Miss Medill has her
doctorate in music, yes,” he said.
“A highly educated young wo-
man.”

“If it weren’t for the fact that
this may be our last opportunity
to discover how those creatures
reproduce — ” said Laoconia.
She shook her head. “What we
really should be doing is going in
there with a full staff, capturing
representative specimens, putting
them through — ”

“You will note the prohibition
in Section D of the High Council’s
mandate,” said Dr. Fladdis. “‘The
Field Agent may not enclose, re-
strain or otherwise restrict the
freedom of any Rukuchp na-
tive ’ ”

“How bad is their birthrate
situation?” asked Laoconia.

“We have only the word of the
Rukuchp special spokesman.

This Gafka. He said it was crit-
ical. That, of course, was the de-
termining factor with the High
Council. Rukuchp appealed to us
for help.”

Laoconia got to her feet. “You
know what I think of this music
idea. But if that’s the way we’re
going to attack it, why don’t we
just break the law all the way —
take in musical recordings,
players . . .”

“Please!” snapped Dr. Fladdis.

Laoconia stared at him. She
had never before seen the Area
Director so agitated.

“The Rukuchp natives say that
introduction of foreign music has
disrupted some valence of their
reproductive cycle,” said Dr.
Fladdis. “At least, that’s how
we’ve translated their explana-
tion. This is the reason for the
law prohibiting any traffic in
music devices.”

“I’m not a child!” snapped
Laoconia. “You don’t have to ex-
plain all. . .”

“We cannot be too careful,”
said Dr. Fladdis. “With the mem-
ory of Monligol still fresh in all
minds.” He shuddered. “We must
return to the spirit of the SocAnth
motto: ‘For the Greater Good of
the Universe.’ We’ve been
warned.”

“I don’t see how music can be
anything but a secondary stimu-
lant,” said Laoconia. “However, I
shall keep an open mind.”

108

GALAXY

1 AOCONIA Wilkinson looked
up from her notes, said:
“Marie, was that a noise outside?”
She pushed a strand of gray hair
from her forehead.

Marie Medill stood at the op-
posite side of the field hut, staring
out one of the two windows. “I
only hear the leaves,” she said.
“They’re awfully loud in that
wind.”

“You’re sure it wasn’t Gafka?”

Marie sighed and said, “No, it
wasn’t his namesong.”

“Stop calling that monster a
him!” snapped Laoconia.

Marie’s shoulders stiffened.

Laoconia observed the reflex
and thought how wise the Service
had been to put a mature, veteran
anthropologist in command here.
A hex-dome hut was too small to
confine brittle tempers. And the
two women had been confined
here for 25 weeks already. La-
oconia stared at her companion —
such a young romantic, that one.

Marie’s pose reflected boredom
. . . worry . . .

Laoconia glanced around the
hut’s crowded interior. Servo-re-
corders, night cameras, field com-
puters, mealmech, collapsible
floaters, a desk, two chairs, fold-
ing bunks, three wall sections
taken up by the transceiver
linking them with the mother
ship circling in satellite orbit
overhead. Everything in its place
and a place for everything.

“Somehow, I just can’t help
calling Gafka a him,” said Marie.
She shrugged. “I know it’s non-
sense. Still . . . when Gafka
sings. . .”

Laoconia studied the younger
woman. A blonde girl in a one-
piece green uniform; heavy peas-
ant figure, good strong legs, an
oval face with high forehead and
dreaming blue eyes.

“Speaking of singing,” said
Laoconia, “I don’t know what I
shall do if Gafka doesn’t bring
permission for us to attend their
Big Sing. We can’t solve this mess
without the facts.”

“No doubt,” said Marie. She
spoke snappishly, trying to keep
her attention away from Lao-
conia. The older woman just sat
there. She was always just sitting
there — so efficient, so driving, a
tall gawk with windburned face,
nose too big, mouth too big, chin
too big, eyes too small.

ARIE turned away.

“With every day that passes
I’m more convinced that this
music thing is a blind alley,” said
Laoconia. “The Rukuchp birth-
rate keeps going down no matter
how much of our music you teach
them.”

“But Gafka agrees,” protested
Marie. “Everything points to it.
Our discovery of this planet
brought the Rukuchps into con-
tact with the first alien music

MATING CALL

109

they’ve ever known. Somehow,
that’s disrupted their breeding
cycle. I’m sure of it.”

“Breeding cycle,” sniffed Lao-
conia. “For all we know, these
creatures could be ambulatory
vegetables without even the most
rudimentary. . .”

“I’m so worried,” said Marie.
“It’s music at the root of the
problem, I’m sure, but if it ever
got out that we smuggled in those
education tapes and taught Gafka
all our musical forms. . .”

“We did not smuggle any-
thing!” barked Laoconia. “The
law is quite clear. It only prohib-
its any form of mechanical re-
producer of actual musical
sounds. Our tapes are all com-
pletely visual.”

“I keep thinking of Monligol,”
said Marie. “I couldn’t live with
the knowledge that I’d contrib-
uted to the extinction of a sen-
tient species. Even indirectly. If
our foreign music really has dis-
rupted . . .”

“We don’t even know if they
breed!”

“But Gafka says. . .”

“Gafka says! A dumb vege-
table. Gafka says!”

“Not so dumb,” countered
Marie. “He learned to speak our
language in less than three weeks,
but we have only the barest rudi-
ments of songspeech.”

“Gafka’s an idiot-savant,” said
Laoconia. “And I’m not certain

I’d call what that creature does
speaking.”

“It is too bad that you’re tone
deaf,” said Marie sweetly.

Laoconia frowned. She leveled
a finger at Marie. “The thing I
note is that we only have their
word that their birthrate is de-
clining. They called on us for
help, and now they obstruct
every attempt at field observa-
tion.”

“They’re so shy,” said Marie.

“They’re going to be shy one
SocAnth field expedition if they
don’t invite us to that Big Sing,”
said Laoconia. “Oh! If the Coun-
cil had only authorized a full field
expedition with armed support!”

“They couldn’t!” protested
Marie. “After Monligol, practi-
cally every sentient race in the
universe is looking on Rukuchp
as a final test case. If we mess up
another race with our med-
dling . . .”

“Meddling!” barked Laoconia.
“Young woman, the Social Anth-
ropological Service is a holy call-
ing! Erasing ignorance, helping
the backward races!”

“And we’re the only judges of
what’s backward,” said Marie.
“How convenient. Now, you take
Monligol. Everyone knows that
insects carry disease. So we move
in with our insecticides and kill
off the symbiotic partner essen-
tial to Monligolian reproduction.
How uplifting.”

110

GALAXY

“They should have told us,”
said Laoconia.

“They couldn’t,” said Marie.
“It was a social taboo.”

“Well. . .” Laoconia shrugged.
“That doesn’t apply here.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve had enough of this silly
argument,” barked Laoconia. “See
if Gafka’s coming. He’s overdue.”

‘jl/TARIE inhaled a trembling
breath, stamped across to
the field hut’s lone door and
banged it open. Immediately the
tinkle of glazeforest leaves grew
louder. The wind brought an odor
of peppermint from the stubble
plain to her left.

She looked across the plain at
the orange ball of Almac sinking
toward a flat horizon, swung her
glance to the right where the wall
of the glazeforest loomed over-
head. Rainbow-streaked batwing
leaves clashed in the wind, shift-
ing in subtle competition for the
last of the day’s orange light.

“Do you see if?” demanded
Laoconia.

Marie dropped her attention to
the foot of the forest wall, where
stubble spikes crowded against
great glasswood trunks. “No.”
“What is keeping that crea-
ture?”

Marie shook her head, setting
blonde curls dancing across her
uniform collar. “It’ll be dark
soon,” she said. “He said he’d re-

turn before it got fully dark.”

Laoconia scowled, pushed a-
side her notes. Always calling it
a him! They’re nothing but ani-
mated Easter eggs! If only . . .
She broke the train of thought,
attention caught by a distant
sound.

“There!” Marie peered down
the length of glazeforest wall.

A fluting passage of melody
hung on the air. It was the
meister-song of a delicate wind
instrument. As they listened, the
tones deepened to an organ throb
while a section of cello strings
held the melody. Glazeforest
leaves began to tinkle in sympa-
thetic harmony. Slowly, the music
faded.

“It’s Gafka,” whispered Marie.
She cleared her throat, spoke
louder, self-consciously: “He’s

coming out of the forest quite a
ways down.”

“I can’t tell one from the
other,” said Laoconia. “They all
look alike and sound alike.
Monsters.”

“They do look alike,” agreed
Marie, “but the sound is quite
individual.”

“Let’s not harp on my tone
deafness!” snapped Laoconia. She
joined Marie at the door. “If
they’ll only let us attend their
Sing. . .”

A six-foot Easter egg ambled
toward them on four of its five
prehensile feet.

MATING CALL

111

The crystal glistening of its
vision cap, tipped slightly toward
the field hut, was semi-lidded by
inner cloud-pigment in the direc-
tion of the setting sun. Blue and
white greeting colors edged a
great bellows muscle around the
torso. The bell extension of a
mouth/ear — normally visible in
a red-yellow body beneath the
vision cap — had been retracted
to a multi-creased pucker.

“What ugly brutes,” said
Laoconia.

“Shhhh!” said Marie. “You
don’t know how far away he can
hear you.” She waved an arm.
“Gaaafkaa!” Then: “Damn!”

“What’s wrong?”

“I only made eight notes out of
his name instead of nine.”

Gafka came up to the door,
picking a way through the stubble
spikes. The orange mouth/ear ex-
tended, sang a 22-note harmonica
passage: “Maarrriee Mmmmmm-
edillll.” Then a 10-second con-
certo: “Laoconnnnia Wiiilkinnn-
sonnnn!”

“How lovely!” said Marie.

“I wish you’d talk straight out
the way we taught you,” said
Laoconia. “That singing is diffi-
cult to follow.”

/^AFKA’S vision cap tipped to-
ward her. The voice shifted
to a sing-song waver: “But polite
sing greeting.”

“Of course,” said Laoconia.

“Now.” She took a deep breath.
“Do we have permission to attend
your Big Sing?”

Gafka’s vision cap tipped to-
ward Marie, back to Laoconia.

“Please, Gafka?” said Marie.

“Difficulty,” wavered Gafka.
“Not know how say. Not have
knowledge your kind people. Is
subject not want for talking.”

“I see,” said Laoconia, recog-
nizing the metaphorical formula.
“It has to do with your breeding
habits.”

Gafka’s vision cap clouded
over with milky pigment, a sign
the two women had come to rec-
ognize as embarrassment.

“Now, Gafka,” said Laoconia.
“None of that. We’ve explained
about science and professional
ethics, the desire to be of real
help to one another. You must
understand that both Marie and
I are here for the good of your
people.”

A crystal moon unclouded in
the part of the vision cap facing
Laoconia.

“If we could only get them to
speak straight out,” said Lao-
conia.

Marie said: “Please, Gafka. We
only want to help.”

“Understand I,” said Gafka.
“How else talk this I?” More of
the vision cap unclouded. “But
must ask question. Friends per-
haps not like.”

“We are scientists,” said Lao-

112

GALAXY

conia. “You may ask any ques-
tion you wish.”

“You are too old for . . . breed-
ing?” asked Gafka. Again the
vision cap clouded over, sparing
Gafka the sight of Laoconia
shocked speechless.

Marie stepped into the breech.
“Gafka! Your people and my peo-
ple are . . . well, we’re just too
different. We couldn’t. There’s no
way . . . that is . . .”

“Impossible!” barked Laoconia.
“Are you implying that we might
be sexually attacked if we at-
tended your Big Sing?”

Gafka’s vision cap unclouded,
tipped toward Laoconia. Purple
color bands ran up and down the
bellows muscle, a sign of con-
fusion.

“Not understand I about sex
thing,” said Gafka. “My people
never hurt other creature.” The
purple bands slowed their up-
ward-downward chasing, relaxed
into an indecisive green. The vi-
sion cap tipped toward Marie. “Is
true all life kinds start egg young
same?” This time the clouding of
the vision cap was only a mo-
mentary glimmerwhite.

“Essentially, that is so,” agreed
Laoconia. “We all do start with
an egg. However, the fertilization
process is different with different
peoples.” Aside to Marie, she
said: “Make a note of that point
about eggs. It bears out that they
may be oviparian as I suspected.”

Then: “Now, I must know what
you meant by your question.”

Gafka’s vision cap rocked left,
right, settled on a point between
the two women. The sing-song
voice intoned: “No.t understand I
about different ways. But know I
you see many thing my people
not see. If breeding (glimmer-
white) different, or you too old
for breeding (glimmerwhite) my
people say you come Big Sing.
Not want we make embarrass for
you.”

4 4 \\/E are scientists,” said
Laoconia. “It’s quite all
right. Now, may we bring our
cameras and recording equip-
ment?”

“Bring you much of things?”
asked Gafka.

“We’ll only be taking one large
floater to carry our equipment,”
said Laoconia. “How long must
we be prepared to stay?”

“One night,” said Gafka. “I
bring worker friends to help with
floater. Go I now. Soon be dark.
Come moonrise I return, take to
Big Sing place you.” The trumpet
mouth fluted three minor notes
of farewell, pulled back to an
orange pucker. Gafka turned,
glided into the forest. Soon he had
vanished among reflections of
glasswood boles.

“A break at last!” barked Lao-
conia. She strode into the hut,
speaking over her shoulder. “Call

MATING CALL

113

the ship. Have them monitor our
equipment. Tell them to get dup-
licate recordings. While we’re
starting to analyze the sound-
sight record down here they can
be transmitting a copy to the
master computers at Kampichi.
We want as many minds on this
as possible. We may never get
another chance like this one!”
Marie said: “I don’t — ”
“Snap to it!” barked Laoconia.
“Shall I talk to Dr. Baxter?”
asked Marie.

“Talk to Helen?” demanded
Laoconia. “Why would you want
to bother Helen with a routine
question like this?”

“I just want to discuss. . .”
“That transceiver is for official
use only,” said Laoconia. “Trans-
mit the message as I’ve directed.
We’re here to solve the Rukuchp
breeding problem, not to chit-
chat.”

“I feel suddenly so uneasy,”
said Marie. “There’s something
about this situation that worries
me.”

“Uneasy?”

“I think we’ve missed the point
of Gafka’s warning.”

“Stop worrying,” said Laoconia.
“The natives won’t give us any
trouble. Gafka was looking for a
last excuse to keep us from at-
tending their Big Sing. You’ve
seen how stupidly shy they are.”
“But what if — ”

“I’ve had a great deal of ex-

perience in handling native peo-
ples,” said Laoconia. “You never
have trouble as long as you keep
a firm, calm grip on the situation
at all times.”

“Maybe so. But. . .”

“Think of it!” said Laoconia.
“The first humans ever to attend
a Rukuchp Big Sing. Unique! You
mustn’t let the magnitude of our
achievement dull your mind.
Stay cool and detached as I do.
Now get that call off to the ship!”

TT was a circular clearing per-
haps two kilometers in dia-
meter, dark with moonshadows
under the giant glaze trees. High
up around the rim of the clearing,
moonlight painted prismatic rain-
bows along every leaf edge. A
glint of silver far above the center
of the open area betrayed the
presence of a tiny remote-control
floater carrying night cameras
and microphones.

Except for a space near the
forest edge occupied by Laoconia
and Marie, the clearing was
packed with silent shadowy
humps of Rukuchp natives. Vision
caps glinted like inverted bowls
in the moonlight.

Seated on a portable chair be-
side the big pack-floater, Lao-
conia adjusted the position of the
tiny remote unit high above
them. In the monitor screen be-
fore her she could see what the
floater lenses covered — the

114

GALAXY

clearing with its sequin glitter of
Rukuchp vision caps and . the
faintest gleam of red and green
instrument lights between herself
and Marie seated on the other
side of the floater. Marie was
monitoring the night lenses that
would make the scene appear as
bright as day on the recording
wire.

Marie straightened, rubbed
the small of her back. “This
clearing must be at least two kilo-
meters across,” she whispered,
impressed.

Laoconia adjusted her ear-
phones, tested a relay. Her feet
ached. It had been at least a four-
hour walk in here to this clear-
ing. She began to feel latent
qualms about what might be
ahead in the nine hours left of the
Rukuchp night. That stupid
warning. . .

“I said it’s a big clearing,”
whispered Marie.

Laoconia cast an apprehensive
glance at the silent Rukuchp
figures packed closely around. “I
didn’t realize there’d be so many,”
she whispered. “It doesn’t look to
me as though they’re dying out.
What does your monitor screen
show?”

“They fill the clearing,” whis-
pered Marie. “And I think they
extend back under the trees. I
wish I knew which one was
Gafka. I should’ve watched when
he left us.”

“Didn’t he say where he was
going?”

“He just asked if this spot was
all right for us and if we were
ready to help them.”

“Well, I’m sure everything’s
going to be all right,” said Lao-
conia. She didn’t sound very con-
vincing, even to herself.

“Isn’t it time to contact the
ship?” asked Marie.

“They’ll be calling any — ” A
light flashed red on the panel in
front of Laoconia. “Here they are
now.”

QHE flipped a switch, spoke
^ into her cheek microphone.
“Yes?”

The metallic chattering in
Laoconia’s earphones only made
Marie feel more lonely. The ship
was so far away above them.

“That’s right,” said Laoconia.
“Transmit your record immedi-
ately and ask Kampichi to make
an independent study. We’ll com-
pare notes later.” Silence while
she listened, then: “I’m sure

there’s no danger. You can keep
an eye on us through the over-
head lenses. But there’s never
been a report of a Rukuchp na-
tive offering violence to any-
one. . . Well, I don’t see what we
can do about it now. We’re here
and that’s that. I’m signing off
now.” She flipped the switch.

“Was that Dr. Baxter?” asked
Marie.

MATING CALL

1 15

“Yes. Helen’s monitoring us
herself, though I don’t see what
she can do. Medical people are
very peculiar sometimes. Has the
situation changed with the na-
tives?”

“They haven’t moved that I
can see.”

“Why couldn’t Gafka have
given us a preliminary briefing?”
asked Laoconia. “I detest this
flying blind.”

“I think it still embarrasses
him to talk about breeding,” said
Marie.

“Everything’s too quiet,” hissed
Laoconia. “I don’t like it.”

“They’re sure to do something
soon,” whispered Marie.

As though her words were the
signal, an almost inaudible vibra-
tion began to throb in the clear-
ing. Glaze leaves started their
sympathetic tinkle-chiming. The
vibration grew, became an organ
rumble with abrupt piping oblig-
atto that danced along its edges.
A cello insertion pulled a melody
from the sound, swung it over the
clearing while the glazeforest
chimed louder and louder.

“How exquisite,” breathed
Marie. She forced her attention
onto the instruments in front of

116

GALAXY

her. Everything was functioning.

The melody broke to a single
clear high note of harmonic bril-
liance — a flute sound that
shifted to a second phase with
expanded orchestration. The mu-
sic picked up element after ele-
ment while low-register tympani
built a stately rhythm into it, and
zither tinkles laid a counter-point
on the rhythm.

“Pay attention to your instru-
ments,” hissed Laoconia.

Marie nodded, swallowing. The
music was like a song heard be-
fore, but never before played
with this perfection. She wanted

to close her eyes; she wanted to
submit entirely to the ecstasy of
sound.

Around them, the Rukuchp
natives remained stationary, a
rhythmic expansion and contrac-
tion of bellows muscles their only
movement.

And the rapture of music in-
tensified.

Tl/fARIE moved her head from
side to side, mouth open.
The sound was an infinity of
angel choirs — every sublimity
of music ever conceived — now
concentrated into one exquisite

MATING CALL

117

distillation. She felt that it could
not possibly grow more beautiful.

But it did.

There came a lifting-expand-
ing-floating ... a long gliding
suspenseful timelessness.

Silence.

Marie felt herself drifting back
to awareness, found her hands
limply fumbling with dials. Some
element of habit assured her that
she had carried out her part of
the job, but that music . . . She
shivered.

“They sang for 47 minutes,”
hissed Laoconia. She glanced
around. “Now what happens?”

Marie rubbed her throat,
forced her attention onto the
luminous dials, the floater, the
clearing. A suspicion was forming
in the back of her mind.

“I wish I knew which one of
these creatures was Gafka,”
whispered Laoconia. “Do we dare
arouse one of them, ask after
Gafka?”

“We’d better not,” said Marie.

“These creatures did nothing
but sing,” said Laoconia. “I’m
more certain than ever that the
music is stimulative and nothing
more.”

“I hope you’re right,” whis-
pered Marie. Her suspicion was
taking on more definite shape . . .
music, controlled sound, ecstasy
of controlled sound . . . Thoughts
tumbled over each other in her
mind.

Time dragged out in silence.

“What do you suppose they’re
doing?” hissed Laoconia. “They’ve
been sitting like this for 25 min-
utes.”

Marie glanced around at the
ring of Rukuchp natives hem-
ming in the little open space,
black mounds topped by dim
silver. The stillness was like a
charged vacuum.

More time passed.

“Forty minutes!” whispered
Laoconia. “Do they expect us to
sit here all night?”

Marie chewed her lower lip.
Ecstasy of sound, she thought.
And she thought of sea urchins
and the parthenogenetic rabbits
of Calibeau.

A stirring movement passed
through the Rukuchp ranks.
Presently, shadowy forms began
moving away into the glazefor-
est’s blackness.

“Where are they going?”
hissed Laoconia. “Do you see
Gafka?”

“No.”

The transmission-receive light
flashed in front of Laoconia. She
flipped the switch, pressed an
earphone against her head. “They
just seem to be leaving,” • she
whispered into the cheek micro-
phone. “You see the same thing
we do. There’s been no move-
ment against us. Let me call you
back later. I want to observe
this.”

118

GALAXY

A Rukuchp figure came up be-
side Marie.

“Gafka?” said Marie.

“Gafka,” intoned the figure.
The voice sounded sleepy.

Laoconia leaned across the in-
strument-packed floater. “What
are they doing now, Gafka?” she
demanded.

“All new song we make from
music you give,” said Gafka.

“Is the sing all ended?” asked
Marie.

“Same,” breathed Gafka.

“What’s this about a new
song?” demanded Laoconia.

“Not have your kind song be-
fore correct,” said Gafka. “In it
too much new. Not understand
we how song make you. But now
you teach, make right you.”

“What is all this nonsense?”
asked Laoconia. “Gafka, where
are your people all going?”

“Going,” sighed Gafka.

Laoconia looked around her.
“But they’re departing singly . . .
or . . . well, there don’t seem to be
any mated pairs. What are they
doing?”

“Go each to wait,” said Gafka.

And Marie thought of cary-
ocinesis and daughter nuclei.

“I don’t understand,” com-
plained Laoconia.

“You teach . how new song
sing,” sighed Gafka. “New song
best all time. We keep this song.
Better much than old song. Make
better — ” the women detected

the faint glimmer-haze lidding of
Gafka’s vision cap — “make
better young. Strong more.”
“Gafka,” said Marie, “is the
song all you do? I mean, there
isn’t anything else?”

“All,” breathed Gafka. “Best
song ever.”

Laoconia said: “I think we’d
better follow some of these. . .”
“That’s not necessary,” said
Marie. “Did you enjoy their mu-
sic, Dr. Wilkinson?”

“Well. . .” There appeared to
be embarrassment in the way the
older woman turned her head
away. “It was very beautiful.”
“And you enjoyed it?” per-
sisted Marie.

“I don’t see what. . .”

“You’re tone deaf,” said Marie.
“It’s obviously a stimulant of
some sort!” snapped Laoconia. “I
don’t understand now why they
won’t let us. . .”

“They let us,” said Marie.

TT AOCONIA turned to Gafka.
^ “I must insist, Gafka, that we
be permitted to study all phases
of your breeding process. Other-
wise we can be of no help to you.”
“You best help ever,” said
Gafka. “Birthrate all good now.
You teach way out from mixing
of music.” A shudder passed up-
ward through Gafka’s bellows
muscles.

“Do you make sense out of
this?” demanded Laoconia.

MATING CALL

119

“I’m afraid I do,” said Marie.
“Aren’t you tired, Gafka?”
“Same,” sighed Gafka.
“Laoconia, Dr. Wilkinson, we’d
better get back to the hut,” said
Marie. “We can improvise what
we’ll need for the Schafter test.”
“But the Schafter’s for deter-
mining human pregnancy!” pro-
tested Laoconia.

The red light glowed in front
of Laoconia. She flipped the
switch. “Yes?”

Scratching sounds from the
earphones broke the silence.
Marie felt that she did not want
to hear the voice from the ship.

Laoconia said: “Of course I
know you’re monitoring the test
of . . . Why should I tell Marie
you’ve already given Schafter
tests to yourself . . .” Laoconia’s
voice climbed. “WHAT? You
can’t be ser. . . That’s impossible!
But, Helen, we . . . they . . . you
. . . we ... Of course I . . . Where
could we have . . . Every woman
on the ship. . .”

There was a long silence while
Marie watched Laoconia listen-
ing to the earphones, nodding.
Presently, Laoconia lifted the
earphones off her head and put
them down gently. Her voice
came out listlessly. “Dr. Bax . . .
Helen suspected that . . . she ad-
ministered Schafter tests to her-
self and some of the others.”
“She listened to that music?”
asked Marie.

“The whole universe listened
to that music,” said Laoconia.
“Some smuggler monitored the
ship’s official transmission of our
recordings. Rebroadcast stations
took it. Everyone’s going crazy
about our beautiful music.”

“Oh, no,” breathed Marie.
Laoconia said: “Everyone on
the ship listened to our record-
ings. Helen said she suspected
immediately after the broadcast,
but she waited the full half hour
before giving the Schafter test.”
Laoconia glanced at the silent
hump of Gafka standing beside
Marie. “Every woman on that
ship who could become pregnant
is pregnant.”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” asked
Marie. “Gafka’s people have de-
veloped a form of group parth-
enogenesis. Their Big Sing sets
off the blastomeric reaction.”
“But we’re humans!” protested
Laoconia. “How can. . .”

“And parts of us are still very
primitive,” said Marie. “This
shouldn’t surprise us. Sound’s
been used before to induce the
first mitotic cleavage in an egg.
Gafka’s people merely have this
as their sole breeding method —
with corresponding perfection of
technique.”

Laoconia blinked, said: “I won-
der how this ever got started?”
“And when they first en-
countered our foreign music,”
said Marie, “it confused them,

120

GALAXY

mixed up their musical relation-
ships. They were fascinated by
the new musical forms. They ex-
perimented for new sensations
. . . and their birthrate fell off.
Naturally.”

“Then you came along,” said
Laoconia, “and taught them how
to master the new music.”

“Exactly.”

“Marie!” hissed Laoconia.

“Yes?”

“We were right here during
that entire. . . You don’t suppose
that we . . . that I . . .”

“I don’t know about you,” said
Marie, “but I’ve never felt more
certain of anything in my life.”

QHE chewed at her lower lip,
^ fought back tears. “I’m going
to have a baby. Female. It’ll have
only half the normal number of
chromosomes. And it’ll be sterile.
And I. . .”

“Say I to you,” chanted Gafka.
There was an air of sadness in the
singsong voice. “Say I to you: all
life kinds start egg young same.
Not want I to cause troubles. But
you say different you.”

“Parthenogenesis,” said Lao-
conia with a show of her old
energy. “That means, of course,
that the human reproductive pro-
cess need not . . . that is, uh . . .
we’ll not have to ... I mean to
say that men won’t be. . .”

“The babies will be drones,”
said Marie. “You know that. Un-

fertile drones. This may have its
vogue, but it surely can’t last.”
“Perhaps,” said Laoconia. “But
I keep thinking of all those re-
broadcasts of our recordings. I
wonder if these Rukuchp crea-
tures ever had two sexes?” She
turned toward Gafka. “Gafka, do
you know if. . .”

“Sorry cause troubles,” in-
toned Gafka. The singsong voice
sounded weaker. “Must say fare-
well now. Time for birthing me.”
“You are going to give birth?”
asked Laoconia.

“Same,” breathed Gafka. “Feel
pain on eye-top.” Gafka’s prehen-
sile legs went into a flurry of
digging in the ground beside the
floater.

“Well, you were right about
one thing, Dr. Wilkinson,” said
Marie. “She-he is not a him”
Gafka’s legs bent, lowered the
ovoid body into the freshly dug
concavity in the ground. Immedi-
ately, the legs began to shrink
back into the body. A crack ap-
peared across the vision cap,
struck vertically down through
the bellows muscles.

Presently, there were two
Gafkas, each half the size of the
original. As the women watched,
the two half-sized Gafkas began
extruding new legs to regain the
normal symmetry.

“Oh, no,” whispered Marie.
She had a headache.

— FRANK HERBERT

MATING CALL

121

ZOOLOGY 2097

Trial-and-error familiarization with "y“ be

impractical on a far ^/nTsTngle man constitutes, in effect,

«Lr rf m --Sb o, that Planet's Earth-population. This is the
“why” of the Space Zoologist. .. „c a result of a government-

^ ’ZXXZ — on the heels

£ - -

men on board had been mere y lines 0 f so il and air, some photo-

accomplished without

incident. . that occa sioned the discovery of the

It was the second Mars landing that ocean koalas ^

quilties. These furry beasts, somewhere e wee tangles of fur, were

appearance save for overall bright orang ® , th ew me mbers as

found to be friendly, and to Ambulant rag-toys cut

mascots and pets. The amma s ’ * d d da erve the nickname of “quilties".

that endeared them to all the men °” * a ® d b k to Eart h along with
the „ s rSi!" " -y S s r rCrt. There were no subsequent

meSSa Mars Flight Three found the remains of the crew where the quilties

had left them. found that the biology

On investigation ^ t a nd they considered man -

of the quilty was similar t tke relative position of a

as they would anything warm an y beasts minute hairlike

caterpillar. During the cuddling with the the flesh

r:~ BTthe Mowing morning, the men had been eaten to death
from within by the grubs of gestating ba^y qmlto. mentioned

All of this, of course, is common knowledge : t< oday c ^ astr0 .

here solely to demonstrate to you the > “ ol Contact, and the

t had ~ *" d

eZtTSrlTerran folisation would be next to impossible.

efforts extra lerran ..CONTACT — Its Application and

Indigenous Hazards
by Lt. Commander Lloyd Rayburn,
U. S. Naval Space Corps

A man who lived three lives? A piker! Jerry
Norcriss lived hundreds — all over the Galaxy!
By JACK SHARKEY Illustrated by SCHELLING

ARCTURUS

TIMES

THREE

L IEUTENANT Jerry Nor-
criss stood at the edge of
the wide green clearing,
sniffing contentedly of the not-
unpleasant air of Arcturus Beta.
Three hundred yards behind him,
crewmen and officers alike la-
bored to unload the equipment
necessary for setting up camp for
this, their first night on the planet.

No one had asked him to lend
his strong back to the proceed-
ings. Space Zoologists were never
required to do anything which
might sap, even slightly, any of
their physical energies. Moreover,
they were under oath not to take
any orders to the contrary.

Now and then, a hot-shot pilot

would feel resentment at the
zoologist’s standoffish position,
and take out his feelings with a
remark like, “Would you pass the
sugar, if you don’t think it would
sprain your wrist, sir?” Such inci-
dents, if reported back to Earth,
inevitably resulted in the break-
ing of the pilot, and his imme-
diate removal from command. It
was seldom the zoologist himself
who made the report. Any crew
member who overheard such
statements would make the re-
port as soon as possible, no mat-
ter what feelings of loyalty they
might otherwise have for the pilot
or person who had spoken.

From the moment of landing,

ARCTURUS TIMES THREE

123

the lives of every man aboard a
ship were in the hands of the
Space Zoologist.

From Captain Daniel Peters,
the pilot, down to Ollie Gibbs, the
mess boy, there was nothing but
respect for Jerry Norcriss, and no
envy whatsoever for the job he
would soon be doing. That is not
to say they were on friendly terms
with him, either.

It was the next thing to im-
possible to call a Space Zoologist
“friend.” Even amongst them-
selves, the zoologists were dis-
tracted, bemused, withdrawn from
their surroundings. After their
first Contact, they never were able
to join in amiable camaraderie
with other men. Such social con-
tact was not forbidden them. It
was merely no longer a part of
their inclination. In their eyes a
cool, silvery light shimmered, an
inner light that marked them for
the ultimate adventurers they
were. No person would ever suf-
fice them. They lived only for
the job they did. Without it, few
lived longer than a terrestrial
year. Even with it, there was often
sudden death.

Jerry was barely thirty, but his
thick shock of hair was almost
totally white and his mouth a
firm line which never curled in
a smile nor twisted in a frown.
At the edge of the clearing, his
bronzed flesh glowing ruddily in
the failing sunset light of Arc-

turus, he stood and waited. Off in
the distance behind him, Daniel
Peters started across the clearing
from the sunset-red gleaming of
the sleek metal spaceship.

He drew abreast of the solitary
figure, and said respectfully, “All
in readiness, sir.”

The words reached Jerry as
from across a void. He turned
slowly to face the other man, fo-
cusing his will with the effort it
always took just to use his voice.

“Thank you, Captain,” he said.

That was all he said, but as he
followed Peters across the clear-
ing toward the scorched circle
where the great ship had de-
scended on its column of fire,
the pilot could not suppress a
shudder. Jerry’s voice was oddly
disconcerting to the nervous sys-
tem of the listener. It seemed
like the “ghost-voice” of a medi-
um at a seance. The mind that
was Jerry Norcriss was only uti-
lizing a body for the purpose of
speaking. It did not actually be-
long there.

And that was true enough.
Jerry and the others of his kind
no longer lived in their bodies.
They merely existed there, wait-
ing painfully for the next occa-
sion of Contact.

TT>ESIDE the ship’s ladder,
hooked to an external power-
outlet beneath a metal flap on
one towering tailfin, was the

124

GALAXY

couch and the helmet Jerry Nor-
criss would use.

Jerry lay back with the ease
of long habit and adjusted the
helmet-strap beneath his chin, as
Peters read to him mechanically.
The data came from the trans-
lated resume of the roborocket
that had gathered data on Arc-
turus Beta for the six months
prior to the landing of the space-
ship.

“. . . three uncatalogued species,”
his voice droned on. “An under-
ground life-pulse in the swamp-
lands near the equator; the
creature could not be spotted
from the air ... A basically feline
creature, also near the equator,
but in a desert region, metabolism
unknown . . . And pulses of intel-
ligent life, and of some unfamiliar
lower animal life, on the northern
seas . . . All other life-forms on
the planet conform to previously
discovered patterns, and can be
dealt with in the prescribed man-
ners.”

A small section of Jerry Nor-
criss’s mind found itself mildly
amused, as always, by this bit of
formality. The outlining of the
planetary reconnaissance to a
Space Zoologist was mere proto-
col, a holdover from the ancient
custom of briefing a man who was
about to undergo a mission of
importance. Vainly did the zool-
ogists try to convince authority
that this briefing was futile. A

man in Contact was no longer a
man. He was the creature whose
mind he inhabited, save for a
miniscule remnant of personal
identity. His job was to Learn the
creature from the inside out. As
his mind, off in the alien body,
Learned, the information was
relayed via the Contact helmet
to an electronic brain on the
ship, to be later translated into
code-cards for the roborockets.

Man’s expansion throughout
the universe was progressing
faster than his mind could memo-
rize or categorize.

The roborockets obviated his
need to learn. For every known
kind of alien-species problem,
there was a solution. The scan-
nerbeams of the rocket would
sense each life-form over which
they passed, in the rocket’s six-
month orbit about the planet. If
all species conformed to already
known types, then a signal would
fly by ultrawave across the void
to Earth, declaring the planet fit
for immediate colonization. But
if new species were encountered,
the beam to Earth carried a hur-
ried call to the Naval Space
Corps, with a request for the next
available zoologist.

Zoologists spent their Earth-
side time at Corps Headquarters,
in the Comprehension Chamber.
There, with the millions of index-
cards at fingertip control, they lay
back upon their couches and

ARCTURUS TIMES THREE

125

learned, through dreamlike vicar-
ious playbacks, about the species
Contacted by their confreres. Any
Space Zoologist with even five
years’ service had more accu-
mulated knowledge in his brain
than any dozen ordinary zoolo-
gists. And more intimate knowl-
edge, too. A man who has been
an animal has infinitely more
knowledge of that animal than a
man who has merely dissected
one.

CO JERRY lay there, letting his
^ ears record the voice of the
pilot but closing his conscious
mind to the import of the words.
It never did any good to know
that the creature you were about
to be was unknown. And no com-
ment on what sort of animal it
might be could be half so infor-
mative as actually being what it
was.

Jerry repressed an urge to
fidget. This was almost the worst
part of Contact: The wait, while
the senseless briefing took place.
Soon enough he would know more
of the species under observation
than could be held on ten reams
of briefing-sheets. Soon enough
he would be sent, for an irreduci-
ble forty minutes, into the mind
of each of the creatures to be
learned.

The irreducible time-extent of
Contact was its primary hazard.
When the Contact helmet had

been developed, it had been found
that approximately forty minutes
— forty-point-oh-three minutes,
to be exact — had to be spent in
the creature’s mind. No amount of
redesigning, fiddling or tinkering
could change that time. The Zoo-
logist could spend neither more
nor less than that amount in a
creature’s mind.

Since all creatures have natural
enemies, Contact called for more
than simply curling up and re-
laxing inside the alien mind. The
zoologist’s host-alien might have
a metabolism which called for it
to drink a pint of water every
fifteen minutes or shrivel. In
which case the zoologist would
shrivel with it, his punishment
for not sufficiently Learning his
host.

This, then, was the reason those
irreducible forty minutes were a
hazard. Should the creature be-
ing Contacted die, the zoologist
died with it. There was no avoid-
ing death if it came to the in-
habited creature. A good zoolo-
gist Learned fast, or perished.
Which is why there is no such
thing as a bad Space Zoologist.
You’re either a good one or a
dead one.

Peters’ voice came to a halt
and he closed the plastic folder
over the briefing-sheet.

“That’s about the size of it, sir,”
he said. “We’ve focused the Con-
tact-beams toward the indicated

126

GALAXY

areas and made a final check of
all the wiring, tubes and power-
sources.”

Jerry sighed contentedly and
shut his eyes.

“Whenever you’re ready, then,
Captain,” he whispered, and
relaxed his body in preparation
for his first Contact. His mind
and imagination toyed a moment
with brief fancies about his forth-
coming existences in swamp,
desert and sea, then he pushed
the thoughts away and let his
mind go empty.

Faintly, he heard Peters call-
ing an order to the technician
within the spaceship —

Then silent lightning flashed
across his consciousness.

II

TTE OPENED his eyes. Six
eyes. In two rows of three
eyes each.

He did not, however, see six
images. The widespread belief in
the multitudinous images seen by
the faceted eyes of a housefly
had been debunked the first time
a helmeted biochemist had in-
truded upon that insect’s puny
brain. As with human eyes, the
images were fused into a whole
when they reached the mind.
Save for the disconcerting sensa-
tion of possessing a horizontal
and vertical peripheral vision of
approximately three hundred

degrees sight was comfortably
normal.

Jerry looked over his surround-
ings and noted one slightly annoy-
ing side-effect of his hexafocal
outlook. As a human will see —
as when looking at the tip of a
pencil pointed at the face — two
images at the far end of any ob-
ject looked upon, so Jerry, while
able to zero in anywhere he chose,
could see six ghost-images cor-
responding in their angle of per-
spective to the positions of his
six eyes. Had he a pencil-tip to
stare at, it would have appeared,
beyond the tip, to be vaguely like
a badminton bird seen head on,
with images of the pencil-body
comprising the “feathers.”

A few moments of glancing
about soon took care of the
primary irritation of this unfamil-
iar sensation, and Jerry began to
study his surroundings carefully.

He was inside a circular cavity
of some sort, facing toward bright-
ness at the opening ahead of him.
The walls of the cavity were dark,
sandy-smooth and slightly moist,
so he reasoned he was in some
sort of burrow in the soil. Beyond
the opening, there was light and
warmth and a hint of greenery
which his host’s eyes could not
bring into sharp focus.

“I wish I knew my size,” he
thought. “Am I some small insect
awaiting a victim, or a rabbit-
souled mammal hiding from a

ARCTURUS TIMES THREE

127

predator, or a lion-sized carnivore
sleeping off a heavy meal?”
Attempts to turn his head for
a look at his host’s body availed
him nothing. Jerry relaxed for a
moment, and tried to sense his
body by feel. He had, he knew in
a moment, no neck. Head and
torso were a one-piece unit, or
at least inflexibly joined.

Carefully, Jerry moved his
right “hand” out before his face
for a look. He saw a thin, flesh-
covered bony limb, with a double
“elbow,” terminating in a semi-
circular pad which seemed suited
for nothing but support. No claw,
talon or digit on the pad; just a
tesselated rubbery bottom, the
tesselations apparently acting as
treads do on a tire.

“Whatever I am,” Jerry sighed,
“I’m non-skid.” He considered a
moment, then added, “I can’t be
an insect, then. Insects can’t rely
on weight to keep them rightside
up, and need gripping mechan-
isms. Okay, insect-size is out.”

J ERRY extended the pad before
him and cautiously leaned his
weight on it, then removed it
back beneath his torso and
studied the earth where it had
rested. There was a concavity
there, corresponding to the pad.
It was not especially deep.

“Well, that lets out elephant-
size,” he reasoned, “and most
oversize forms. I must be some-

where between a mouse and a
middle-sized wolf. But what am
I?”

Jerry tried breathing. Nothing
happened; there was no sense of
dilation anywhere in his body.
“Odd,” he thought. “Unless I get
oxygen — or whatever gases this
creature breathes — through my
food . . . Or maybe I have air-
tubes like an insect’s ... No, I’d
have to shift my body now and
then for air circulation, and I feel
no discomfort remaining still. Be-
sides, I have flesh, and that tube
arrangement only functions well
in a body with an endoskeleton.
Must be dependent on food in-
take, then. Stores its oxygen or
whatever.”

He extended the tesselated
pad, and rubbed it cautiously
against the soil. There was a dim
sensation of touch in the pad. But
it was subordinate to a soma-cen-
tric sense of location. His pad
“knew” where it was in relation to
his body, but had no great tactile
capacity for his surroundings.
“Well,” Jerry thought, “that lets
out feeling my body to determine
shape or function.”

As it sometimes did when he
was enhosted, his mind went back
to old Peters, his instructor, who
had taught “Project C” to the
eager young zoologists. Project
Contact had been mostly devoted
to giving the student an open
mind on metabolism and adapta-

128

GALAXY

bility to environment. A Learner
had to be able to reason out —
and quickly — the metabolism of
his host. It was little use know-
ing a Terran life-ecology; man
lives on combustibles and oxygen,
the oxygen combining with com-
bustibles to provide heat, and
plants live on carbon dioxide and
water and sunlight, renewing the
atmospheric oxygen. So old
Peters had always stressed the
student’s learning their Basic
Combinations.

Basic Combinations prepared
the student — or so the school
board hoped — for a wide variety
of chemical relationships between
a host and its environment. The
students had to know what to do
to survive should the host, for
instance, live in a chlorine at-
mosphere, and need large
amounts of antimony in its diet
for proper combustion and sur-
vival. There were a good many
chemical elements in the uni-
verse; the student had to know
how to deal with any combina-
tion of them in a host’s metabol-
ism.

For the most part, the instincts
of the host would carry a Learner
through the Contact period. A
species tended to keep its physical
needs not only in its mind, but
in its body as well. Mr. Peters
had a saying he’d been fond of
emphasizing to the students:
“When in doubt, black out.” The

saying became a cliche to the
student body, but they had the
sense not to disregard it. A cliche
is, after all, only a truth which
has become trite because it is
vitally necessary to use it often.

“When in doubt, black out,”
meant simply that if a situation
arose which seemed impossible to
handle rationally, the enhosted
Learner’s last resort was reliance
upon the instinctive behavior of
the host. The only thing to be
done was to pull the mind into a
tiny knot bobbing in the host’s
own brain, and let the host itself,
once more in control, take the
Learner instinctively to environ-
mental victory. Or defeat.

r I ^HERE were dangers, of course.

A Learner enhosted in a
chicken, for instance, would be a
fool to trust the chicken’s instincts
regarding, say, a snake. A chicken
confronted by' a snake tends to
become hypnotized by its deadly
adversary, and to stand stupidly
in place until it is killed. In cases
of that sort, the Learner would
be safer taking control and going
clucking off to the nearest high
ground.

On the other hand, a Learner
inhabiting something with the
hairtrigger instincts of a bat
would be much better off letting
the animal’s instincts take over
in moments of grave risk, such as
flying through the blades of a

ARCTURUS TIMES THREE

129

revolving fan. A bat could get
through without a second thought
about those whirling metal scy-
thes, but a man’s mind could not
think fast enough to avoid a grim
death by all-over amputation.

“Maybe,” Jerry thought hope-
fully, “I’ve got an easy one.” It
was possible, of course. His host
might be in the midst of an after-
noon siesta, and Jerry could relax
and “sit out” his forty minutes of
Contact. But such cases were few.
At any moment a predator might
come down into that orifice in
the soil, and Jerry would have
to fight for his host’s life to pre-
serve his own. Relaxed Learning
was seldom feasible.

“I’d better see what sort of
fighting equipment I have,” he de-
cided, wishing vainly that he
could just turn his head and look
his body over. This proceeding by
feel was a slow, tortuous, and
sometimes deceptive process. Hol-
low fangs that seemed capable of
injecting venom into an enemy
might — as in the case of the
Venusian Sea Vampires — turn
out to be an organ for drinking
water, the sacs above the fangs
being for digesting liquids and
not for storing poisons.

Jerry stimulated what should
be his tongue into action, check-
ing for the presence of fangs.
Within the mouth of the creature,
which felt large in relation to its
head, he sensed a rasping move-

ment, a kind of dull dry rustling,
but could feel nothing with the
tongue itself. “Best have a look
at it,” he decided suddenly, and,
opening his jaws, extended the
tongue.

J ERRY was distinctly shocked
by the thing that skewed and
writhed forward from beneath his
eyes. His sensation was not un-
like that of a man who opens his
mouth and finds a snake in it.
And Jerry further realized that
he was now seeing with another
sextet of eyes, at the end of the
tongue.

He was not one alien — he
was two!

His primary six eyes took in
the pink-and-gray horror extend-
ing ahead of him. The tongue was
almost like another animal, ser-
pentine in construction, and had
two horny — what? — arms? —
pincer-jaws? — at either side of
the “head”. They were tubular,
like a cow’s horns, and lay at
either side of a wide slit-mouth
in the tongue itself.

On impulse, Jerry Swiveled the
tip of the tongue back upon itself,
and gazed through the six eyes
around the tongue-slit-and-jaws/
arms at the main body of his host.
Then, suddenly feeling ill, he
snapped the tongue back into his
mouth and shut his jaws.

It had been a horrible sight.
Where he’d expected to see the

130

GALAXY

abdominal region of his host, just
behind the thoracic section, there
lay a wet, red concavity, in the
midst of gaping jaws. Jerry him-
self was enhosted in a “tongue”
of some still larger creature
within that soft earthen burrow!
And some remaining fragment of
his host’s awareness told him
that the creature of whom he
was the tongue was itself the
tongue of yet another creature.
He was a segment of some
gigantic segmented worm-crea-
ture whose origin lay who-knows-
how-far beneath the earth.

Carefully, stilling a mental
feeling akin to mal de mer, he re-
protruded his tongue and looked
more carefully at it. Sure enough,
just behind the “head” of the thing
were two stubby growths, not yet
mature. In time, Jerry realized,
those growths would develop into
a pair of double-elbowed front
“arms” with semi-tactile tesse-
lated pads at the base, and the
curving jaws/arms would drop
off or be resorbed, while that
“tongue” extended a “tongue” of
its own.

“And then what happens to my
segment?” he wondered. “Do I
simply lie here forever with jaws
agape?”

As he pondered this, there
came a movement in the greenery
just beyond the burrow orifice.
A squiggly thing with an ill-as-
sorted tangle of under-append-

ages came prancing with almost
laughable ill-balance into view.
Jerry, intent on observing this
creature — very like a landbound
jellyfish walking clumsily upon
its dangling arms — relaxed his
vigil as regards control of the
host.

Before he realized it, his jaws
were flung wide, and that self-
determined tongue was leaping
for its prey. The horny jaws/ arms
clamped into the viscous body of
the passing creature, and the slit-
mouth extended upper and lower
lips like pseudopods to cover the
writhing, squealing victim. Then
a huge lump appeared in the
tongue, just behind its “head.”
Jerry waited with a distinct lack
of relish for the still squirming
“meal” to make its alimentary
way back into his own esophag-
ous.

However, it did not. Just short
of his lips, it halted. And after a
few moments, it ceased to strug-
gle.

Annoyed, but uncertain just
why he was, Jerry attempted to
re-mouth his tongue. It did not
come back. His jaws lay open
wide, and his tongue remained
where it had shot forward to grasp
the tentacled creature.

Something clicked in Jerry’s
mind, and he once more tried
“seeing” out of the tongue’s six
eyes. He found that he still could,
but dimly.

ARCTURUS TIMES THREE

131

It took him about three sec-
onds to figure out his peril.

rpHE SEGMENT behind his
own would never re-swallow
his segment, which had been its
tongue. It couldn’t. It was dead.
For the time-period in which his
own segment had existed as the
third segment’s tongue, it had
some control over it. It could
extend the tongue, and could see
through the eyes in the tongue.
But then Jerry’s segment had
fed, had grown, and the parent-
segment had died, as had its
parent-segments before it. The
thing, whatever it was, grew fast,
too.

That was the frightening part.

Even while he thought this, he
saw that the lump was gone from
his tongue. But his tongue was
twice the size it had been!

Repeated efforts on his part to
withdraw it back within his jaws
met with failure. Again he tried
looking through its eyes, and
found his tongue-vision even dim-
mer. Then with a tremor of shock,
he realized that his own vision
was dimmer, too.

His host was dying. It was no
longer needed to house the
tongue.

Up ahead of him, the tongue-
part was digging busily with those
pincers, erecting for itself an ex-
tension of the burrow. Like a mole
in reverse, it did not make a

mound by tunneling through the
soil, but by lying atop the soil
and erecting itself a circular
tunnel in which to await victims.

Jerry’s mind brought to him a
vision of what this section of this
unknown morass must look like,
with miles and miles of curving
tunnels, each housing a hideous
worm-creature, of whom all seg-
ments were dead except the front
one, which would in turn be dead
as soon as its tongue had fed a bit
and grown to mature size.

Shivering within his mind,
Jerry wondered how much of the
forty-minute period had gone by.

He had no way of estimating.
His personal time-sense was over-
powered by that of his host. A
man within a gnat, with the life-
span of a day, would feel sub-
jectively that he had lived a life-
time within it, although only
those same forty minutes would
pass by until his return to his
own body, helmeted upon the
couch.

Each new segment might take
a day to grow, or it might take a
few minutes. Jerry could not tell.
He could only wait until he was
sent to his next Contact. There
was no method of self-release
from Contact. That was why sur-
vival was imperative.

A flicker of movement caught
his dimming vision, and he real-
ized that his tongue had snared
yet another of the jellyfish-things.

132

GALAXY

The second lump was quickly
absorbed as he watched, and he
found he could no longer make
contact at all with the six eyes
of the tongue-tip. His own six
were blurring, with a rapidity he
was able to observe, and he knew
that the life of the host could
not last very long.

Vaguely, he was aware that the
stubby growths of his tongue had
now sprouted into appendages
such as his own. The tongue could
no longer be called that, because
it was nearly a full-grown seg-
ment. Within it, he imagined, it
was growing a new tongue of its
own, the faster to hasten its own
eventual demise.

66T’VE got to stop it,” he
thought. “But how can I? It
won’t withdraw, no matter how
hard I try. And if it would, it’s
grown too large to fit inside my
jaws any more, even if I tried
cramming it in with these stupid
pads of mine . . .”

He stopped the pointless line
of reasoning and lifted his pair of
double-elbowed “arms” before his
failing sextet of eyes.

“They look strong enough, but
are they?”

He could feel his control slip-
ping. His life would hang upon
the success or failure of 'his ex-
periment, but there was no time
to try and reason out a better
attempt at survival.

Swiftly, ignoring the wriggling
protests of the segment before his
own, he encircled it tightly with
those two-jointed “arms” and held
it tight and painfully taut. It was
still soft, still relatively raw from
its rapid growth, and was not
equipped to fend off attack from
the rear. Jerry, straining terribly,
ignoring the searing pain that
licked his consciousness, cruelly
and methodically tore out what
had been his tongue.

The dripping end of the thing
flopped once, then lay still. And
Jerry’s vision, after swimming in
gray haze for a moment, coal-
esced once more into sharp focus
and he knew his host was alive
again.

“Whew!” he gasped, grateful to
shut the great jaws once more.
“It’ll be tough, but I know how to
survive, now. My segment’s low
enough on the evolutionary scale
to regenerate lost parts; it will
grow itself a new tongue. If I
don’t get lifted to a new Contact
in the meantime, I’ll simply tear
that one out, too, and hang on
until I get out of this damned
thing!”

Then the segment ahead of him
moved, and Jerry knew cold fear.

At the mouth of the burrow,
one of the squiggly jellyfish-things
had inserted a tentacle into the
burrow and was busily ingesting
the torn-out segment into a gap-
ing hole in its underside amongst

134

GALAXY

the shiny, wiggling arms. Even as
he watched, it had completed its
meal, and with a shiver of gusta-
tory pleasure, readjusted its rela-
tive dimensions until it was three
times its former size.

“This,” said Jerry, bitterly, “is
one hell of an ecology. Each crea-
ture is the other’s chief natural
enemy!”

Then his fright grew as he saw
that the jellyfish — he could no
longer think of it as anything
else — was methodically ripping
down the walls of the burrow, and
coming for him.

Frantically, Jerry tried getting
at the thing with his tongue, but
the raw stump within his jaws
was still in the process of gene-
rating a new head-and-eyes part.
A mere stub shot forward to wag
futilely at the approaching
enemy.

Jerry shot his tesselated pads
forward, trying to push and pum-
mel the thing away, but the few
blows that landed rebounded
from that shiny body like pith-
balls bouncing from an electro-
static plate.

Then the jellyfish grappled
with, and held onto, one of Jerry’s
arms, and began calmly to tuck it
into its digestive cavity. If the pad
had been only lightly tactile be-
fore, it became supersensitive
now, as the creature’s digestive
juices began to erode it into its
component chemicals.

Jerry felt as if he’d rammed
his hand into an open wood fire.
He tried to scream; nothing
emerged between his jaws except
that futile tongue-stump. The
jellyfish, climbing in a leisurely
fashion down the limb it was in-
gesting, flicked out a tentacle and
began doing something horrible
to Jerry’s upper right eye. It sent
waves of pain into his mind, and
almost blotted out all thought,
except for a maniac notion that
urged Jerry to laugh at the
creature’s ambition. For its
highly maneuverable tentacle-tip
was diligently attempting to
unscrew the eye.

Jerry’s right arm was gone.
Tentacles flipped and floundered
all about his head-section. The
digestive cavity of the jellyfish
was widening, trying to take in
Jerry’s head at a single swallow.
He saw, with the five usable eyes
remaining, a crystally concavity,
the sides glinting with digestive
fluid tinted beautiful emerald by
the foliage out beyond its semi-
transparent body. Then the thing
closed over his head, and the last
of the eyes began to sear and
sting.

Jerry’s mind cried out in an-
guish . . . and lightning flashed
across his consciousness. White,
silent lightning.

Pain ceased.

The time of Contact had
passed.

ARCTURUS TIMES THREE

135

Ill

/^APTAIN Daniel Peters paced
agitatedly back and forth be-
fore the couch holding that still
figure in its bulky helmet. The
last glow of the sunset had
vanished behind the trees around
the clearing minutes before.
Peters took three puffs from a
just-ignited cigarette, then crush-
ed the white cylinder under his
heel.

“Sir?” said a man at the air-
lock of the ship.

Peters looked up swiftly, and
identified the speaker as the
technician for the Contact mecha-
nism.

“How’s it going?” he asked, try-
ing to keep his voice matter-of-
fact.

“First report’s just come in,”
said the man, with a brief smile.
“Information’s being coded onto
a new card for the roborocket
index. I guess Norcriss came
through the Contact all right. His
life-pulse still shows on the
panel. It was flickering badly
for a few minutes, though. Think
I should terminate?”

Peters hesitated, then shook
his head. “No, I guess not. They
tell me there are no after-effects
to even a hazardous Contact. Nor-
criss’ll be wanting to get on with
it . . . poor devil,” he added, with
a wry smile that touched only

his lips, didn’t reach his eyes.
“Proceed, seaman.”

The other man nodded, and
vanished within the ship . . .

IV

\^AST flat fields of sun-bronzed
’ stone stretched in all direc-
tion to the horizon, pockmarked
with rimless craters, seething with
red liquid which flickered with
dusty blue fingers of fire here and
there on its surface. Every so
often a pale plume of steamy
white rose toward the coppery
overturned bowl that was the
sky.

Cautiously Jerry sniffed the air.
Sulphur. That was the red liquid
burning in those many pits: Yel-
low sulphur melted into gluey
scarlet pools amid the nearly in-
visible shimmer of its consuming
fires.

“Sulphur doesn’t steam,” Jerry
thought idly, still sniffing at the
fumes. “So the white plumes
mean there is water, or some
volatile liquid, mingled with the
deposits in these pits.”

After a moment, he realized
that he was no longer taking
random sniffs of the fumes, but
was actually indulging himself in
a regular orgy of breathing. The
smell of the sulphur was as strong
and piercing as he’d ever known
it, but absent was the almost
simultaneous effect of raw throat,

136

GALAXY

streaming eyes, and hacking
cough.

“The desert air must be nearly
all sulphur gases,” he realized.
That would explain the hue of
the sky, and the not-unpleasant
silvery haziness of the atmos-
phere.

“And I, if I don’t keel over in
a few more moments, must be a
sulphur-breathing creature.”

Sunlight, from nearly directly
overhead, was warm and comfort-
able upon his head, back and
hindquarters. An unusually flex-
ible feeling in the caudal region
of his spine told him that he had
a tail, even before he swung his
huge head about for a glance at
it. The body, as bronzed as the
rock on which it stood, was some-
thing like a lion’s, although the
taloned feet, from heel to the first
leg-joint, were horny and rough
in appearance. They were not un-
like those of a barnyard fowl, if
considerably thicker and decid-
edly more lethal.

That, save for a hard-to-see
fringe of darker fur that ran up
his neck toward where he felt his
ears to be, was all of his body
that he could view.

“I wonder,” he mused, “what
my head looks like?”

A brief turning of the problem
in his mind gave him the solution
to it. It wasn’t the best possible
way of getting an idea of his latest
cranial conformations, but — un-

less there was a looking-glass
lying about — it was the only way
at hand.

Jerry tilted his head until his
eyes fell upon his shadow on the
brown rock beneath him. By tilt-
ing it from one side to the other,
and joining the various silhouettes
in his mind by a simple applica-
tion of basic gestalt, he knew what
his head looked like.

Very like a lion’s, except that
it seemed to have no external
ear. A single slender silhouette
that fell from the forehead re-
gion, stiletto-pointed, must be a
sort of horn, unless it deciduated
periodically, like a deer’s antlers.

P^URTHER speculation on his
appearance was interrupted
by the appearance of another
creature, trotting like a terrier
between the fuming sulphur-pits,
coming his way.

It could be a twin to what he
now knew he looked like, but it
seemed just a bit smaller, some-
how. And it was carrying some-
thing carefully in its teeth.

“Should I run, fight or just ig-
nore it?” Jerry wondered. “It
doesn’t seem menacing. But
neither does a Pekinese till you
try to pet it.”

He allowed his mind to re-
treat a fractional bit from con-
trol of his host, and watched its
reactions to the newcomer. Jerry
felt a surge of emotion, a sort

ARCTURUS TIMES THREE

137

of fond, proud, doting feeling, and
knew that this approaching crea-
ture was his cub. “That’s a help,”
he thought, relieved, and resumed
control of the animal.

The cub halted a short distance
away, and gently set its burden
upon the rock, placing a fore-
footful of talons upon the thing
before letting go with its jaws.
Under the talons, the thing
moved. Jerry saw that it was a
sort of squirrel, except that it
had well-developed forepaws,
the pads of which hinted that it
undoubtedly ran quadripedally
instead of climbing trees. Then
the memory of the sort of terrain
he was in re-crossed his mind,
and Jerry felt foolish.

Naturally it didn’t climb trees
in a region that was devoid of
any vegetation whatsoever.

Jerry noticed that the cub
seemed to be waiting for some-
thing. He wished he could speak.
He had the goofy feeling that he
was supposed to say, like a man
confronted by a bottle of Chateau
Neuf in the hopeful hands of a
wine steward, “That’ll do nicely,
thank you.”

A nod was almost universally
a sign of acquiescence, so he tried
that instead. The cub seemed
pleased, and immediately, by
lowering that forehead-horn be-
tween a pair of the talons en-
folding the struggling land-squir-
rel, snuffed out its life with a

thrust through its neck. Then it
removed the talons from its prey,
and took a backward step.

Apparently, as the sire, Jerry
was to get first bite.

“Now don’t go all picayune,”
he cautioned his digestive tract.
“Come on, Jerry boy. You eat
oysters while they’re alive. You
should be able to eat a squirrel
when it’s dead. Besides, if you
like the smell of this lion-crea-
ture’s atmosphere, you’ll probably
like the taste of its food. Eat
hearty.”

With that, Jerry lowered his
head and let his sharp teeth snap
off a haunch of the squirrel-thing.
He went to ohew it, then realized
that — unlike his prior Contact’s
over-equipage — he had no
tongue. This was strictly a bolt-
your-food host. So he tossed his
head back, and managed, with a
spasmodic effort of his thick
muscular throat, to get the morsel
into his stomach.

The cub stepped forward then,
bit off a chunk for itself and got
it down with less apparent effort.

“Well, he’s had more practice
at tongueless eating,” Jerry con-
soled himself. Then, noting that
the cub was standing patiently
awaiting something, he swayed
his head from side to side, try-
ing to convey, “No thanks, it’s
all yours, kid.”

But the cub, its head tipped
perplexedly to one side, was still

138

GALAXY

watching him, waiting for some-
thing, a sort of puzzled anxiety
in its gaze. Jerry reasoned that
if he simply backed off, the cub
would take that as a gesture of
refusal to eat any more, so he
took a few steps away from the
squirrel-thing.

A ND the cub, an almost human
look of bafflement on its face,
gurgled a whine from its throat.
It began to bounce about on its
legs like a housebroken dog that
very urgently wants out.

Jerry thought hard. The fran-
tic desire of the cub for him to
do something was more than
mere pettishness on its part.
There was real panic in its eyes,
now. Jerry felt the first thrill of
danger. What was he doing
wrong? Or what wasn’t he doing
right?

Mere after-you-Pop protocol
could not explain the glint of
fright in his cub’s eyes. Or could
it?

Jerry tried to remain calm and
think reasonably. The sire-and-
cub relationship was throwing
him. Most animals — in the
narrow group that remained
linked by relationship and af-
fection even after the cubs
matured — ran along opposite
lines. The parent went out and
got food for the kids, and not
vice-versa. On this planet, ap-
parently, having a cub was the

nearest thing to Social Security.

“Remember, you idiot,” Jerry
snapped at himself, “this is a
species. It is no beast rational
mind you are dealing with, but
an animal mind. That means
that the cub’s apparent protocol
is instinctive, and not a matter
of etiquette. And an instinct has
a reason behind it, doesn’t it?
Only man can skip over protocol.
You have to do something be-
fore the cub feels that it can
do it — and whatever it is
you’re not doing, it’s driving the
cub to distraction. You’d better
go for a second helping of
squirrel, and fast, or you’re
going to have your kid in a
mental institution!”

Not exactly relishing complet-
ing the meal, Jerry stepped back
to the furry little corpse on the
rock, and only as he came near
enough to bite into it was he
suddenly aware of another odor
mingling with that of the sul-
phur fumes. Unbelieving, he
stared at the spreading pool of
putrescence that ringed the re-
mains of his cub’s prey. He
stared, silent and amazed, as
flesh and bone crumbled and
dissolved there on the ground,
until there was nothing there but
the noissome liquid and a few
tiny teeth.

“Incredible!” thought Jerry.
“To decompose so damned fast!
But it certainly explains why

ARCTURUS TIMES THREE

139

Junior brought me that thing
still alive and kicking. It didn’t
last more than a few minutes
after it died — Ugh!”

The sickly retch boiled out
from his stomach with a painful
expansion, and he scented the
same foul odor on his breath
as arose from the liquid that
now lay drying in the burning
sunlight.

“The damn thing’s going rot-
ten inside me!” he said to him-
self, feeling the first wave of
illness shake him from horn to
tail-tip.

His flesh, beneath its bronze-
colored fur, felt suddenly cold
and greasy. Jerry knew that feel-
ing well, from one summer when
he’d eaten a sandwich with
mayonnaise that had lain too
long outside the refrigerator. It
was the onset of ptomaine. He
and the cub could be dead, in
a very ugly manner, within less
time than he had to await his
next Contact. Or was it less
time? It was subjective, wasn’t
it? Maybe this period would be
over more quickly than the last
one. Or maybe more slowly . . .

J ERRY turned to look at the
cub. Its eyes were glazing. It
was breathing in gasps through
its open mouth, staggering as it
tried to remain on its feet.

“We’re poisoned,” Jerry groan-
ed. “And it’s not on purpose.

That cub didn’t trot here with
that squirrel just to knock off
its old man! There’s something
else has to be done, something
I’ve overlooked. And my stupid-
ity is killing us.”

Weakly, almost automatically,
Jerry’s conscious mind did the
only thing possible under the
circumstances. Cliche of old
Peters or not, “When in doubt,
black out” was the only solu-
tion. Jerry swiftly relinquished
his grip on the controls, and let
the lion-thing take over its own
destiny.

The first thing it did was
rush toward the scarlet surface
of the boiling sulphur pit near
the cub. The muscles relaxed
and showed no sign of relaxing
in that flame-bound gallop, and
Jerry grabbed at its mind and
got back in control just as its
forefeet stood on the brink of
that blue-flaming red pool.

“Oh, damn!” he groaned, ago-
nized by both his fear of fire
and the growing discomfort with-
in his stomach. “Of all the crea-
tures in the universe, I have to
hit one with the lemming-in-
stinct. This damn thing’s bent on
boiling itself alive if I let go.
And if I stay in control, I die of
ptomaine!”

Jerry Norcriss wasted nearly
thirty seconds feeling sorry for
himself. And then he remem-
bered something about lem-

140

GALAXY

mings. And also something about
cubs.

Lemmings, those strange little
rodents that take it periodically
in their heads to all go rushing
into the ocean and drown, are
not suicide-bent. Their ancestry
is older than the continent on
which they live. At one time the
spot wherein they plunge into
the ocean was linked with the
next continent over. The migra-
tion — for that’s what it is with
lemmings — had at one time
been perfectly safe. So safe that
the migration of the lemmings
became instinctive. And, after
the continents separated, or the
band of land joining them sank
beneath the sea, the lemmings
blithely continued their trek, and
perished. Lemmings might die,
but the ages-old instinct of the
specie wouldn’t.

No animal, Jerry realized, is
deliberately self-destructive. No
animal but man — who is more
than animal, and can decide
upon his own destiny despite
what his instincts buck for.

And cubs, Jerry recalled with
chagrin, are not always born
knowing survival-tactics. Some
cubs have to be taught how to
survive. And this one is still in
the process of learning, and only
senses that — since it is becom-
ing deathly ill — something is
horribly wrong. It wants its sire
to show it survival, and its sire

is in the hands of a nincompoop
like me . . .

T^ORTUNATELY for Jerry and
the cub, his thoughts on cubs
and lemmings lasted only a frac-
tional second, so all-inclusive is
the mind’s apprehension of a
situation.

And then Jerry, feeling greatly
relieved, let go of the controls
once more and let the lion-thing
bend and drink from the blazing
sulphur-pool at its feet.

Of what the host was con-
structed, Jerry had no idea. Its
cell-structure might be high in
silicates, or possibly be akin to
asbestos. Whatever it was, the
blazing red sulphur went down
its gullet like sweet warm wine,
and the decaying squirrel-thing
was transformed into chemicals
that were comfortably digestible.

Jerry was glad to see that the
cub, standing on shaky legs, was
drinking, too. It seemed likely
to survive its brush with death.

Not a bad life, he thought.
Catch a meal, take a swig of
wine and then just loaf around
in the sun. Nice planet ... if
you like sulphur, and have a
bright-eyed young kid who won’t
make a move without your ap-
proval and example —

Jerry’s ruminations were cut
short by a sound of leathery
wings, high in the coppery sky.
Abruptly alert, he lifted his

ARCTURUS TIMES THREE

141

shaggy head and saw an ominous
formation of Vs in the sky. They
grew in size, and became the
forms of gigantic airborne things,
a cross between the ancient Ter-
ran pterodactyl and a sort of
saber-toothed ape.

Something told him these ap-
proaching things were not
friendly.

He turned his head to the
cub, but this, apparently, was a
lesson already learned, because
all he saw of his scion was a
disappearing blur of buttocks
and tail as the cub scurried in
a clumsy gallop across the plains
of sunburnt rock. In another
instant, Jerry was scurrying right
after him, for reasons above and
beyond Togetherness.

The paws wouldn’t manage
right, so he finally dropped back
a bit and let the lion-thing’s
brain take over the job of
escape, his own mind merely
going along for the ride.

“But where can we hide?" he
wondered, fascinated despite his
fear. “Can we pull the hollow
reed routine under the surface
of a sulphur-pit? Or are there
caves someplace in the vicinity?
Or do we just run until either
our legs or those simianipters’
wings give out?”

Then his mind got entangled
with the purely empirical cogi-
tation about the validity of coin-
ing a word like simianipters

(which seemed to mean “ape-
winged” when the coinage he de-
sired was “winged-apes”) and his
mind was bouncing so busily be-
tween this knotty problem and
the chances of escape from those
creatures and the puzzle of just
what constituted safety from the
flying things that he barely
noticed the white flash of silent
lightning that heralded cessation
of Contact.

V

ii/^ONTACT completed,” said
the technician to Peters, in
the purple twilight slowly deep-
ening to black starry night.
“Slight dimming of Norcriss’s
life-pulse this time, not so bad as
last time.”

Peters nodded as he ripped
open a fresh packet of cigarettes.
“Machine functioning properly?”
“Yes, sir,” the technician
nodded. “Norcriss could go on
at least three more Contacts
with the power we have left.
Shall I activate him again, sir?”
“Go ahead,” murmured Pe-
ters, his eyes fastened on the
pallid face of the young man
on the couch . . .

VI

"IVTOISE. Footsteps on metal.

' Metal meant refined ores,
and that in turn meant intel-

142

GALAXY

ligence. Yet he couldn’t inhabit
an intelligent mind!

Jerry opened his eyes and
took in the scene before him.
His vista was oddly diverted into
vertical panels, and then, as his
mind settled into full control, he
knew that the panels were
spaces between bars.

The thought crossed his mind
that bars must be vertical every-
where in the universe. Horizon-
tal ones would hold a prisoner
as well, but the origin of bars
lay in primitive stockades,
stakes plunged into the ground
about a prisoner. Primordial
tribal habits were not easily
broken, even after attainment of
civilization.

Through the bars he saw —
well — men. They were at least
bipedal, and walked upright, and
had two upper limbs with facile
digits at the ends, all in keeping
with the nearly universal rule of
bilateral identity.

Beyond that, the resemblance
to man ceased.

The creatures he saw were
clothed in satiny uniforms, yet
something about the material
told him it would hold up under
heavy stress. Wherever their
actual bodies showed — head
and hands, mostly, though a
man of apparently lesser rank
was bared to the waist, working
on a machine set against one
wall — they were covered with

short (or cropped) white down.
Jerry could detect on the heads
no sign of ears or nose, but in
the midst of the furry expanse
of face, tiny green-glinting beads
of jet were eyes, and a thin,
wide blue-gray slit further down
was the mouth.

The hands, he noted with in-
terest, were furred even within
the palms. Or so he thought until
one of the creatures, idly flexing
a hand, showed Jerry that the
fingers bent on double joints in
either direction. There were no
nails as such, but each digit on
those deceptively soft-looking
hands terminated in a tapering
cone of some hard black mate-
rial, as shiny as the eyes in those
coconut-frosted faces.

Jerry once more had cause to
regret the impossibility of Con-
tact within a mind of an intel-
ligent creature. Intelligence
equated with impenetrability, so
far as Contact went. You could
learn of an intelligent race only
so much as their words and
gestures and behavior cared to
let you know.

Jerry knew he was in a sea-
region, but whether over it, on
it, or under it — No. The room,
so far as he could see, was
windowless. It could mean that
the vehicle was carrying its own
atmosphere, in order to keep the
riders alive, whether the outside
surface of the ship were within

ARCTURUS TIMES THREE

143

inimical gases or liquids, or the
deadly nothingness between
planets.

Then again, he might simply
be within a fortress, or below
sea-level in a ship. Jerry gave it
up, and concentrated on himself,
and his barred container.

f'pHE CAGE was as high as
one-fourth the height of any
of the men before it, so Jerry
reckoned his own size as about
one-sixth. If they were all six-
footers, then he must be about
rabbit-sized. He glanced down
his body and saw hard gray
scales over a curving belly, with
a pair of hind feet that seemed
to be all phalanges and no
metatarsals. From “heel” to foot-
tip, Jerry had three long, hard-
looking black spikes. “Something
like a swan’s foot with the web-
bing removed,” he mused.

A look at his forepaws before
his face showed him three simi-
lar phalanges, though only two-
thirds the length of the hind
ones, and having in addition a
sort of stubby rudimentary
thumb. His forearms were scaly,
too, and possessed a wicked
spur of the same black material
jutting downward from the
elbow.

Happily, three sides of his
cage were polished metal walls,
so he was able to get an inkling
of his facial characteristics in the

warped uncertain mirror of the
surfaces. He saw startled-looking
eyes, round as quarters, with red
irises that dilated greatly with
each tilt of his head toward the
shadowy rear of the cage, and
narrowed the orifice about the
pupil to a pinprick when he
turned near the front. He seemed
to be noseless, also. When he
tried to sniff, nothing hap-
pened. The attempt made his
head feel stuffed up, but he knew
that the feeling was only inside
his mind, and not an actual sen-
sation.

Jerry looked at his mouth. It
was just a wide slit in his round,
earless head — no, not earless;
there were auricular holes under
a flange of gray scale — just a
wide slit with a glint of sharp-
pointed bright orange teeth.

“Well,” he thought, “I’m at
least a carnivore, possibly an om-
nivore, with teeth like that. The
light in this room is apparently
not intolerable to those fur-faces
out there. So — if the slight
shooting pains in my head plus
the shutting of the irises when I
face into the room are any
criteria — I must be a nocturnal
beast of some kind. Eyes like
this would be blinded by sun-
light.”

He decided he was, in the
ecology of the fur-faces, some-
thing along the lines of a rac-
coon, even if his flesh were

144

GALAXY

scaly as a pangolin’s. “Maybe
I’m a pet,” he hoped. “But there’s
something about the atmosphere
of this room — ”

Something rustled and clacked
against the wall of his cage.

Jerry withdrew his control a
fraction to let the host’s mind
tell him what it might be. The
mind of his host was atingle
with antagonism. Yet, as Jerry
heard a similar movement some-
where off to the far side, the
mind of his host grew suddenly
tender and excited.

Jerry re-assumed control, hav-
ing the information he needed.
His cage was one of at least
three, possibly many more, hous-
ing animals like the one enhost-
ing him. The nearby cage con-
tained an animal of his own sex,
the other contained an animal
of the opposite sex, possibly a
mate. Whether male or female,
Jerry had no idea. He had in
any Contact — barring a pro-
creative arrangement beyond the
simple bisexual — a fifty-fifty
chance of being male. The worm
had been self-generating, the uni-
cornate lion-thing had been male.
What Jerry’s present sex was, he
had no idea. Even on Earth,
scaly creatures tended to baffle
all but the experts as to sex.
Jerry inspected the mind of his
host for a few moments, but
could find out only that it
yearned for that other one in

the other cage. The intensity of
the yearning gave no clue
if the urge were man-for-woman,
woman-for-man, mother-for-child,
child-for-parent or — it was
barely possible — friend for
friend.

Jerry decided to ignore the
yearning by taking full control
of the host once more. He took
stock of his circumstances. Here
he was, a nocturnal carnivore,
caged with many of his own
kind in a vehicle moving through
space or water.

He was not just there for the
ride, that was certain.

Being delivered somewhere?
No, the room beyond the bars
looked little like a storage hold.
Of course, these fur-faces might
have alien ideas about the way
a storage hold should look. Still,
they seemed to be bosses of
some kind. There was no mistak-
ing the dressy look of their uni-
forms. A high-ranking officer
might go into a storage hold,
but it would be for an inspec-
tion only, and these creatures
were busily doing something in
the center of the room.

nPHERE were three of them,
discounting the bare-to-the-
waist man working on that odd-
looking machine. They stood by
some waist-high object — two
with their backs to Jerry, one
in profile — very intently ab-

ARCTURUS TIMES THREE

145

sorbed in something on that sur-
face.

Jerry twisted his head about,
but could make out no relevant
details on that surface. “They
could be studying a map laid
out on a table,” he pondered,
curiously. “Or maybe they are
shooting dice at a crap table,
or — ■”

Further conjecture was sud-
denly, and horribly, obviated.

The man at the wall straight-
ened up from his labors and
announced something, unintel-
ligible to Jerry (the voice was
an unbroken hum that rose and
fell in pitch, unarticulated into
consonants or vowels), which
undoubtedly meant, “She’s all
fixed.” The fur-face in profile
turned with quick attention and
stepped to the machine. He
pulled from its slot a thing like
the cable-supported arm of a
small crane terminating in a
cone-shaped flexible surface, and
arranged it over the thing on the
table which his movement to
the machine had exposed to
Jerry’s gaze.

The thing on the table was
the face of another of the white-
furred men, and Jerry suddenly
knew that this was an operating
room. These men were doctors,
involved in surgery.

The machine, so hastily re-
paired, was some sort of anes-
thetizing gadget They’d had to

wait for it before proceeding. All
this information Jerry worked
out with only a small part of
his mind; the majority of his con-
centration was focused upon the
other thing he’d seen upon the
table, strapped wide-eyed into
position beside the patient.

It had scales, sharp orange
teeth, and might have been a
rabbit-sized cross between a
raccoon and a pangolin, and the
wide eyes were tightly irised into
discs of coppery red, with no
visible pupils, under the light
that overhung the operating
table.

“What the hell is going on
here?” Jerry thought, with dis-
may. “Surgery? In the same
room with cages full of animals?
What about sanitation? What
about infection? The doctors are
maskless. The room is only pas-
sably clean — certainly not
scoured with green soap, alcohol
or live steam. And that repair-
man is standing beside the table
scratching his stomach!”

Bewildered, yet drawn to
watch with morbid fascination,
Jerry ignored the pain that star-
ing into the room brought to his
eyes, and gave full attention to
the proceedings.

HTHEY were — from a raccoon/
pangolin’s viewpoint — pretty
ghastly. The men, muttering to
each other as medics the uni-

146

GALAXY

verse over must while engaged
in surgery, started snipping and
plucking and sawing and clamp-
ing with lackadaisical facility
upon the two bodies strapped to
the table. One medic concen-
trated upon the man, the other
upon the animal, while the an-
esthetist merely held the cone
lightly upon the patient’s face,
and glanced now and then at
dials upon the machine proper,
as if for reassurance, or possibly
to show that they were efficient
and well-trained.

They did not trouble to an-
esthetize the animal.

As they shifted about in their
work, Jerry got a better look at
the patient. All along his chest
and belly, the white fur was
gone. From the edges of the
empty region, Jerry could see
that the fur had been scorched
away. The surviving fur in the
periphery was stunted and slight-
ly carbonized. The “flesh” be-
neath that exposed region was
smooth, excepting a few blistered
spots near the center. It resem-
bled thin, flexible green plastic,
of the sort that seems to be
translucent, but is actually trans-
parent, the darkness of the color
tending to make it seem opaque
unless light could be placed di-
rectly behind it. Into this sur-
face went the scalpels and
clamps and pins of the medics,
until they had a triangular flap

lying back to expose the organs
within.

Jerry, well-versed in all the
metabolisms available to the
scientists of Earth, was com-
pletely baffled by this one. None
of the internal organs was
fastened to anything.

The abdominal hollow of the
creature was filled with a clear
lemon-colored liquid. The organs
just floated within the liquid.
They were, Jerry noticed with
amazement, not even juxtaposed
with any sort of permanence.
Even as the medic reached for
them, they bobbed and moved
about each other in the yellow
fluid, as impermanent of locale
as apples in a rainbarrel.

Then Jerry had it.

“They’re colloidal!” he gasped
within his mind. “A tough,
flexible outer shell! The whole
thing hollow from cranium to
fingertip to toe, containing a
liquid that acts as reagent, cata-
lyst, suspensor and electrolyte
for the mineral crystals, cell
globules and chemical coagulates.
These fur-faced creatures are
nothing more than ambulant, in-
telligent hunks of protein! The
whole setup’s there. The lemon-
colored fluid is the dispersion
medium, and those ‘organs’
they’re lifting out are the dis-
perse-phase. But . . . what do
they need the raccoon/pangolin
for?”

ARCTURUS TIMES THREE

147

't'M

‘ir/9

a".

r k

His fellow-creature, hissing in
agony, was already a glittering,
almost formless thing under the
grisly tools of the medic stand-
ing over it.

It was, Jerry realized, being
laid belly-open with no more
regard than is given a lobster’s
tail-muscle by the gourmet with
his tiny three-pronged fork.

Jerry could only watch and
wonder and wait to see the use
to which the animal would be
put. He had not long to wait.

/~VNCE laid open, the animal’s
internal fluid, a pale gray
solution, was sucked out into a
bulb-headed tube, much as a
housewife gets the turkey-drip-
pings from under the bird for
basting. The fluid was dribbled
into a row of transparent jars
with calibrated sides, some get-
ting more, some getting less.
Then a drop of liquid — a
brown liquid for this one, a red
for that one, and so on — was
added to each. While Jerry
gazed at the scene, fighting the
headache that began to grow
with the brightness of the lights
over the operating table, the med-
ic captured each jar and gave it
a sharp, practiced shake.

And then the whole picture
was clear to Jerry.

“Crystal-clear,” he said, with
bitter humor.

For that was the answer. The

fur-faces were colloidal, the rac-
coon/ pangolins were crystalloid.
Whatever fluid lay within the
bellies of the animals, it was a
super-saturate, needing but the
right chemical additive before
coming out of its liquid state to
form the right crystals.

In each jar, almost instantly
after shaking, bright crystals had
begun to form within the liquid.
Within but a few moments, the
jars were being uncapped and
the medics, with neat little tongs,
were lifting the crystals from
the solutions and placing them
within the abdominal cavity of
their anesthetized patient. The
flap was fastened down into
place with a gadget that seemed
to work on the principle of a
soldering iron. As it slid along
the angled edges of the incision
the sides met and fused, leaving
only a tiny ridge to attest to
the fact of the operation.

One of the medics nodded to
the bare-to-the-waist creature
still standing by. The man
shoved over a wheeled cart,
slipped the patient onto it and
wheeled him out of the room
through an archway barely
within Jerry’s field of vision.

Jerry’s main concern, however,
was for the fate of the crystalloid
creature, lying so still upon the
table. One of the medics undid
the straps across the body, lifted
it by a hind leg and shoved it

ARCTURUS TIMES THREE

149

through a hinged metal flap
against the wall, then stabbed a
button . . .

A red flare went off beyond
the still oscillating metal flap,
and Jerry had all the informa-
tion he needed. A nice little in-
cinerator, for hollowed-out corp-
ses.

“I wonder,” Jerry thought
dismally, “how long my forty
minutes will take in this Con-
tact!” His headache was grow-
ing worse, and it wasn’t just from
the lights.

At that moment, a sudden
lurch sent him crashing against
the wall of the cage. A clamor
of alarm bells began throughout
the vessel.

One of the medics yelled
something, and threw a switch
against the wall opposite that
housing the anesthetizing ma-
chine. A panel slid away, reveal-
ing a large mosaic of close-
packed little spheroids. As the
medic twisted a dial at the base
of this arrangement, some of the
spheroids began to flicker
whitely, while others remained
dark.

Then Jerry recognized it for
what it was. A form of tele-
vision screen, composed of
individual lights instead of phos-
phorescing dots activated by
magnetically guided electrons
from a cathode. The effect was
the same.

A picture, sharply etched by
the alternation and varying in-
tensities of the bulbs, appeared
on the mosaic-screen. Across the
dream-like surging of the black-
gray-and-white heavy seas in the
foreground, Jerry made out an
armada of strange-looking ves-
sels coming across the -ocean
toward wherever the pickup
camera lay. Unlike Earth-ves-
sels, they tapered inward as the
sides of the vessels rose from the
waters, then were abruptly
truncated near what would have
been a peak by a railinged area
that was the deck.

“Unless I’m much mistaken,”
thought Jerry, grimly, “I am on
a ship which — be it alone or
one of many in a convoy — is
about to be attacked by those
vessels out there.”

A SECOND later he knew he
was right.

From the approaching fleet
there had come no sign of ar-
mament, no flash or flame or
belch of smoke or blaze of ray,
but the room he was in jolted
violently, then canted crazily for
a sick moment before righting
itself. The alarm bells grew
louder in their metallic clangor.

Footsteps pounded down the
corridor. The bare-to-the-waist
man or another like him — Jerry
could not distinguish between
the creatures — came into the

150

GALAXY

room shouting something. The
surgeons shouted back and then
the man raced out again.

Another jolt made the room
tremble, but this time it felt
different, as though the room
were built to take that sort of
stress. Jerry recognized that his
ship was in the process of firing
back, with whatever strange
weapons these fur-faces em-
ployed. Even as he reasoned this
out, one of the enemy vessels
on the screen shuddered, split
into almost-matching halves and
plunged beneath the waves amid
much flame and confusion.

The medics were not watch-
ing. One of . them had moved out
of Jerry’s view and now stepped
back into it, carrying the wrig-
gling form of one of the animals
from the cages. As Jerry
watched, the animal, its orange
teeth snapping vainly at those
hard black fingertips on the
medic’s white-furred hands, was
lashed to the table in the gray-
smeared spot where its prede-
cessor had perished. Then the
bare-chested man was coming
back into the room, wheeling a
man on a cart. This one was
missing fur from an arm and
part of the chest area. Jerry was
able to confirm his earlier theory
that the hollowness of the crea-
tures was extended throughout
the flexible green body-sheaths.

“Sonics,” thought Jerry, all at

once. “They’re using sonic rays
on each other. A good dose of
heavy infravibration could ruin a
collodial creature! The loss of
the fur through subsonic friction
is only a side-effect. The main
damage is the breakdown of
those colloid organs when the
beam focuses on a man.”

That would explain the way
the other ship had simply sun-
dered. Artificially induced metal-
fatigue, by the application of
controlled vibration.

“Damn,” thought Jerry, “this is
dangerous!”

Other alien vessels were
visible now on that granulated
“screen,” heading away from the
camera. At least Jerry’s ship was
not alone in the face of that
armada. His ship was one of at
least a dozen — with more, pos-
sibly, outside the pickup range
of the camera — involved on
his side of the battle. Some of
them shattered silently apart
and boiled into the churning
waters with a violence so great
that Jerry could “feel” the sound
with his eyes.

Apparently the medics, while
anxious about the course of the
fray, did not want their surgical
endeavors bothered with the ac-
tual noise of the battle. Or per-
haps the technology which had
evolved this type of TV screen
had never stumbled upon the
familiar-to-Earth methods of

ARCTURUS TIMES THREE

151

transmitting sound by electro-
magnetic radiation.

64TTOW long can forty minutes
last?” Jerry wondered in
growing concern. By his own
time-sense, warped by the life-
span of his host, he felt he’d
been present in that room well
over an hour. And still he was
captive to the environment of
the scaly crystalloid raccoon/
pangolin creature, and doubly
imperiled of survival. Even if
“his” side took the lead in the
struggle, many fur-faces would
need this treatment — which
destroyed one of his species with
each operation.

Jerry did not know whether
or not the animals were chosen
in any special order. But his
mind told him that even were
his host the last so chosen, his
odds for survival were dwindling
fast.

Assuming the wall against
which his cage was stacked with
the others were the same size as
the wall opposite his cage —
and symmetrical construction of
rooms seemed a strong likeli-
hood — then, judging by his
cage-size, the maximum number
of cages that could be so stacked
was six high and four across, or
twenty-four cages. Figuring one
animal per cage, that left some
twenty-one animals ahead of
him.

Possibly — barely possibly —
this tier of cages might not be
against a wall. It might be the
forefront of hundreds of rows of
similar stacked cages. But no
medic hurrying to save a life
would walk to Row #2 when
Row # 1 was still undepleted.

“So if I just sit here,” he
thought, gloomily, “I’m bound to
end up alongside a fur-face on
that table. My life gone so that
his may survive. ‘It is a far, far
better thing I do’ and so on, but
I don’t know as I’m ready to lay
down my life for a fur-face
without even being given the
choice, damn it! Let’s figure a
way out of this mess!”

The ship went whooomp, sud-
denly. The room gave a crazy
tilt again before — rather slug-
gishly, Jerry noted with alarm
— righting itself. At the same
moment the TV screen blanked
out.

“Well, there goes the camera,”
he thought, his insides feeling
oddly cold and upset. “That may
mean that if I don’t die on the
operating table, I may well be
forced to succumb to a watery
grave. Damn! When will those
forty minutes be up?”

He was jerked from his
thoughts by the appearance of
a huge white-furred hand fum-
bling with the catch on his cage.

Hard, pointed black fingertips
reached in through the opened

152

GALAXY

door for him. Jerry snapped and
clacked his teeth upon them in
vain, as he was carried toward
the strap-sided concavity beside
a new fur-scorched patient on
the operating table.

“Use your head!” he screamed
at himself. “These fur-faces aren’t
expecting an intelligent attack
from a lab-animal! The other
crystalloid creatures have the
paltry instinctive self-preserva-
tion mechanism to bite at the
objects gripping them, those im-
pervious black fingertips. But
you know better, right?”

And with that thought, Jerry
tilted his head just a bit further
forward, and let his orange fangs
crackle through the thin chitin-
ous green “flesh” beneath the stiff
white fur on the alien’s wrist . . .

'V7’ELLOW dispersion-medium
A spurted with a satisfactory
gush from the scalloped gap in
the alien’s forearm.

Jerry landed nimbly on his
hind feet on the metal floor as
the shrieking medic dashed to
a confrere for whatever first aid
is given when a colloidal crea-
ture’s liquid contents are spilling
out.

While a minor part of his
mind wondered idly if they’d
employ a tourniquet or just a
cork, the rest of his mind con-
centrated on directing those fore-
paw-and-foot phalanges to carry

him swiftly up the face of the
stacked cages. There were
twenty-four of them, all right,
against the wall. He perched pre-
cariously on the top, in the cage-
roof-to-ceiling space that was too
small for another layer of the
same.

As the fur-face medic fiddled
around with the wrist of the
man Jerry had bitten (it was
the raccoon/pangolin medic, of
course), the anesthetist dragged
a small stool over to the base
of the stacked cages and began
climbing up after him.

“Oh, hell,” thought Jerry, cow-
ering weakly against the wall. “If
I had a piece of chalk or a char-
coal stick I could write some-
thing. Or draw a picture, maybe,
on the ceiling. Then they’d know
I was intelligent, and — They’d
probably use me anyhow. The
middle of a battle is no time
for writing learned scientific
papers about new zoological
‘finds.’ ”

Those black fingertips were
coming for him, too carefully for
a repeat wrist-crunching perform-
ance. If he were taken this time
the bearer would handle with
care.

Jerry skittered and scrabbled
for the corner near the wall,
hoping to engage the anesthetist
in a game of you-climb-up-at-
fhis-point-and-I-run-back-to-fhaf-
point. But the fur-face had too

ARCTURUS TIMES THREE

153

long a reach to make it practical.
As Jerry cowered helplessly,
those black fingertips gripped
him about the throat with
strangling force. It apparently
made no difference if he died on
the top of the cages or under
the scalpel. He could only fend
feebly with his paws at the crea-
ture as he was lifted down to
the table and set into the con-
cavity, dizzy and sick.

“White lightning?” he begged.
“Come on, white lightning!
Please, test, be over. How long
can forty minutes last?”

Then the room gave a horrible
shudder and all the lights went
out.

Jerry, not yet strapped in
place, heard the cries of the
medics, and then the terrifying
sound of rushing seas in the in-
visible corridor as the room
canted swiftly onto its side. This
time it did not right itself. A
thick, falling-elevator feeling
bunched up inside Jerry. He
knew that the warship was plung-
ing beneath the heaving surge
outside.

He scrambled about on the
floor — no, it was the wall now
— almost brained by the crash-
ing bulk of the operating table.
He kept jumping futilely up-
ward, hoping somehow to escape
to the corridor and get outside
the ship before all that water got
inside this room.

Then icy tons of fluid crashed
down upon him, flattening him
against the wall beneath his feet.
The cries of the medics were
suddenly gurgles, then a brief,
faintly heard sound of bub-
bling.

Jerry, trying to swim against
the swirling pressures of the
flood that now lifted him from
against the wall and spun him
end over end, could hold his
breath no longer.

In despair, he felt his jaws
widen and take in the chill liquid
in which he was whirled.

It went in without gagging
him, and did not come out. Not
through his mouth, at any rate.
It came out through long slots
just in front of those auricular
vents in his head.

Gills! Jerry was an amphibian.

Webbing, hitherto folded away,
appeared on his feet. “I’ll be
damned,” he sighed, with weary
relief.

Then he paddled determinedly
about in the utter blackness until
he found a cage lying on its side,
the door sprung open. Jerry got
inside, closed the door until it
caught as well as its broken
catch would allow and settled
himself for a nice wait.

“At least I won’t have to
worry about getting gobbled by
a natural underwater enemy,” he
figured.

He had to wait another sub-

154

GALAXY

jective hour before the silent
flash of white lightning lifted
him out of his third, and last,
Contact on Arcturus Beta.

VII

Ci ALL right, sir?” asked Pe-
ters, removing the bulky
helmet with care.

Jerry sat up and nodded,
blinking his eyes as he adjusted
to his body once more. He was
hard-pressed not to start testing
his own joints and lungs and
limbs for knowledge, and had to
forcibly remind himself that this
frail shell was his “normal” body.

Now to await the technician’s
analysis of the data.

Jerry, waving off Peters’ hand,
outstretched in automatic offer
of assistance, sat up wearily on
the edge of the couch. After a
deep breath he got to his feet.
Within the ship, the data-analy-
zer clattered busily.

“Some hot coffee, sir?” asked
Peters, helpfully.

Jerry was annoyed at the ef-
fort it cost him just to talk.
“That will go nicely, Captain,”
he managed.

The technician leaned out the
airlock door, his homely face
split in a grin. “No problem with
the aliens, sir,” he said to Peters.
“Amiability indeterminate, but
their basic weapon is infrasonics.
They’re built like hard bubbles,

sure suckers for bayonets or bul-
lets. I don’t think, with sonic-
shields, we’ll have much trouble
with them.”

Peters, in the process of pour-
ing Jerry’s coffee, shrugged.
“Well, we’re not here to make
trouble, either. The roborocket
reported that the aliens live
either at sea or at least always
in coastal regions. They shouldn’t
object to our starting a settle-
ment this far inland.”

“And,” said Jerry, suddenly, as
he took the coffee and sipped at
the hot brown liquid, “I suppose
those worm-creatures and the
horned lions are to be elimin-
ated?”

The technician dropped his
eyes. “We can’t have new colon-
ists getting pulled into those bur-
rows, or impaled on those horns,
sir.” He handed the report, trans-
lated by the machine into read-
able English, to Peters. The pilot
scanned the sheets, and nodded.

“Seems easy enough,” he said
agreeably. “Those jellyfish-things,
and the flying apes are similar
to species encountered before.
They’ll respond to simple gun-
fire. Removal of the worm-things
will be automatic, once their
source of sustenance is des-
troyed.”

Jerry continued to sip his
coffee and made no comment.

“As for the lion-things,”
Peters continued, “I doubt we’ll

ARCTURUS TIMES THREE

155

have to attack them directly,
since their digestive mechanism
calls for sulphur from those pits.
When we cap off the pits, or
dry them up, to clear the air for
the incoming colonial wave, that
should starve them out within
a week.”

“Less than that,” Jerry re-
marked emotionlessly. “Being
hungry they’ll eat, regardless.
Then, unable to go on to the
next step in the process — the
ingestion of the sulphur —
they’ll die of food-poisoning.
Simple, neat and efficient.”
Peters smiled and gripped
Jerry’s hand with his own.

“We have you to thank for
the information, sir,” he said, in
obvious admiration. “At least we
know we won’t have to fight the
intelligent aliens. We’ll have the
central regions; they’ll have the
coasts and seas.”

“And — ” Jerry pointedly with-
drew his strong fingers from the
pilot’s hand — “what happens
when Mankind decides to spread
out? When the colony grows
awhile, it’s bound to want some
of the coastal regions. Then
what?”

TEETERS looked uncomforta-
ble, then said, “I don’t think
that’s likely to happen, sir. Not
for some time, at any rate.”
“But it will happen,” said
Jerry, somberly. “It always hap-

pens. Earthmen meet new races,
arbitrate a hit, sign pacts and
move in. Then, when they’re
settled pretty well, they ask the
other race to move out. It’s
almost a truism, Captain, that
Earth can’t comprehend anyone
but an Earthman having any
rights to survival.”

The tight-lipped technician ex-
changed a look with Peters, then
ducked back inside the ship. Ad-
verse commentary about a Space
Zoologist was dangerous. But no
one had yet been broken in
rank or discharged for a facial
expression.

“Well, sir, you’re entitled to
your opinion, of course,” said
Peters, wishing he had the moral
courage to duck inside after the
technician and avoid conversing
with Norcriss. The job was done;
why not forget it?

Jerry, sensing the other man’s
discomfort, dropped the topic,
and contented himself with sit-
ting there in the increasing dark-
ness, sipping his coffee. After a
minute or two, Peters gratefully
mumbled his excuses and went
into the ship.

Jerry sighed, finished his cof-
fee, then began to walk toward
the edge of the clearing, to
watch the stars glow more
brightly than they could in the
interference of the ship’s lights
illuminating the camp.

When he reached the rim of

156

GALAXY

the wooded area, he stopped,
then lay on his back in the cool
grass and watched the night sky,
his thoughts rueful ones and his
inner amusement ironic.

People always were puzzled
about how a Space Zoologist
could stand being a creature
other than a human being. And
Space Zoologists always were
puzzled about how a human be-
ing could stand being part of
that conquering race called man.

The twinkling stars distracted
Jerry. Lying there watching
them, he wondered to which of
their planets he would be sent

next, and to what dangers he
might — in his new bodies —
be subjected.

Neither he nor any of his fel-
low zoologists had any real ap-
prehensions about death in an
alien body. Fear of death, yes.
That was normal enough, and
inescapable in any creature. But
he had no fear of perishing as a
crawling thing, or multilegged
thing, or soaring winged thing.

To Jerry Norcriss — indeed,
to any Space Zoologist — to die
like a man was a dubious honor
at best.

— JACK SHARKEY

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ARCTURUS TIMES THREE

157

BY FRITZ LEIBER

They lived in spaceborne bubbles
and feared the Earth — but not
as much as old Earth feared them!

THE

V

■ I

m mm

ram

CLUSTER

Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS

W HEN the eviction order
arrived, Fats Jordan was
hanging in the center of
the Big Glass Balloon, hugging his
guitar to his massive black belly
above his purple shorts.

The Big Igloo, as the large liv-
ing-Globe was more often called,
was not really made of glass. It
was sealingsilk, a cheap flexible
material almost as transparent as
fused silica and ten thousand

158

GALAXY

times tougher — quite tough
enough to hold a breathable pres-
sure of air in the hard vacuum of
space.

Beyond the spherical wall
loomed the other and somewhat
smaller balloons of the Beat Clus-
ter, connected to each other and
to the Big Igloo by three-foot-
diameter cylindrical tunnels of
triple-strength tinted sealingsilk.
In them floated or swam about an
assemblage of persons of both
sexes in informal dress and un-
dress and engaged in activities
suitable to freefall: sleeping, sun-
bathing, algae tending (“rocking”
spongy cradles of water, fertilizer
and the green scummy “guk”),
yeast culture (a rather similar
business), reading, studying, argu-
ing, stargazing, meditation, space-
squash (played inside the globu-
lar court of a stripped balloon),
dancing, artistic creation in nu-
merous media and the production
of sweet sound (few musical in-
struments except the piano de-
pend in any way on gravity).

Attached to the Beat Cluster
by two somewhat larger sealing-
silk tunnels and blocking off a
good eighth of the inky, star-
speckled sky, was the vast trim
aluminum bulk of Research Satel-
lite One, dazzling now in the un-
tempered sunlight.

It was mostly this sunlight re-
flected by the parent satellite,
however, that now illuminated

Fats Jordan and the other
“floaters” of the Beat Cluster. A
huge sun-quilt was untidily
spread (staying approximately
where it was put, like all objects
in freefall) against most of the in-
side pf the Big Igloo away from
the satellite. The sun-quilt was a
patchwork of colors and materials
on the inward side, but silvered
on the outward side, as turned-
over edges and corners showed.
Similar “Hollywood Blankets”
protected the other igloos from
the undesirable heating effects of
too much sunlight and, of course,
blocked off the sun’s disk from
view.

Fats, acting as Big Daddy of
the Space Beats, received the
eviction order with thoughtful
sadness.

“So we all of us gotta go down
there?”

TTE jerked a thumb at the
Earth, which looked about as
big as a basketball held at arms-
length, poised midway between
the different silvers of the sun-
quilt margin and the satellite.
Dirty old Terra was in half phase:
wavery blues and browns toward
the sun, black away from it ex-
cept for the tiny nebulous glows
of a few big cities.

“That is correct,” the proctor
of the new Resident Civilian Ad-
ministrator replied through thin
lips. The new proctor was a lean

THE BEAT CLUSTER

159

man in silvery gray blouse, Ber-
muda shorts and sockassins. His
hair was precision clipped — a
quarter-inch blond lawn. He
looked almost unbearably neat
and hygienic contrasted with the
sloppy long-haired floaters around
him. He almost added, “and high
time, too,” but he remembered
that the Administrator had en-
joined him to be tactful — “firm,
but tactful.” He did not take this
suggestion as including his nose,
which had been wrinkled ever
since he had entered the igloos.
It was all he could do not to hold
it shut with his fingers. Between
the overcrowding and the loath-
some Chinese gardening, the Beat
Cluster stank.

And it was dirty. Even the
satellite’s precipitrons, working
over the air withdrawn from the
Beat Cluster via the exhaust tun-
nel, couldn’t keep pace with the
new dust. Here and there a film of
dirt on the sealingsilk blurred the
starfields. And once the proctor
thought he saw the film crawl.

Furthermore, at the moment
Fats Jordan was upside-down to
the proctor, which added to the
latter’s sense of the unfitness of
things. Really, he thought, these
beat types were the curse of space.
The sooner they were out of it
the better.

“Man,” Fats said mournfully,
“I never thought they were going
to enforce those old orders.”

“The new Administrator has
made it his first official act,” the
proctor said, smiling leanly. He
went on, “The supply rocket was
due to make the down-jump
empty this morning, but the Ad-
ministrator is holding it. There is
room for fifty of your people. We
will expect that first contingent at
the boarding tube an hour before
nightfall.”

Fats shook his head mournfully
and said, “Gonna be a pang,
leavin’ space.”

His remark was taken up and
echoed by various individuals
spotted about in the Big Igloo.

66T T’S going to be a dark time,”
said Knave Grayson, mer-
chant spaceman and sun-wor-
shipper. Red beard and sheath-
knife at his belt made him look
like a pirate. “Do you realize the
nights average twelve hours down
there instead of two? And there
are days when you never see Sol?”

“Gravity yoga will be a trial
after freefall yoga,” Guru Ishping-
ham opined, shifting from pad-
masana to a position that put his
knees behind his ears 1 in a fashion
that made the proctor look away.
The tall, though presently much
folded and intertwined, Briton
was as thin as Fats Jordan was
stout. (In space the number of
thins and fats tends to increase
sharply, as neither overweight nor
under-musculature carries the

160

GALAXY

penalties it does on the surface of
a planet.)

“And mobiles will be trivial
after space stabiles,” Erica Janes
threw under her shoulder. The
husky sculptress had just put the
finishing touches to one of her
three-dimensional free montages
— an arrangement of gold, blue
and red balls — and was snapping
a stereophoto of it. “What really
hurts,” she added, “is that our
kids will have to try to compre-
hend Newton’s Three Laws of
Motion in an environment limit-
ed by a gravity field. Elementary
physics should never be taught
anywhere except in freefall.”

“No more space diving, no more
water sculpture, no more vacuum
chemistry,” chanted the Brain,
fourteen-year-old fugitive from a
brilliant but much broken home
down below.

“No more space pong, no more
space pool,” chimed in the
Brainess, his sister. (Space pool,
and likewise billiards, is played
on the inner surface of a stripped
balloon. The balls, when properly
cued, follow it by reason of their
slight centrifugal force.)

“Ah well, we all knew this bub-
ble would someday burst,” Gussy
Friml summed up, pinwheeling
lazily in her black leotards.
(There is something particularly
beautiful about girls in space,
where gravity doesn’t tug at their
curves. Even fat folk don’t sag in

freefall. Luscious curves become
truly remarkable.)

“Yes!” Knave Grayson agreed
savagely. He’d seemed lost in
brooding since his first remarks.
Now as if he’d abruptly reached
conclusions, he whipped out his
knife and drove it through the
taut sealingsilk at his elbow.

The proctor knew he shouldn’t
have winced so convulsively.
There was only the briefest whis-
tle of escaping air before the edge-
tension in the sealingsilk closed
the hole with an audible snap.

TZ"NAVE smiled wickedly at the
^“-proctor. “Just testing,” he ex-
plained. “I knew a roustabout who
lost a foot stepping through seal-
ingsilk. Edge-tension cut it off
clean at the ankle. The foot’s still
orbiting around the satellite, in a
brown boot with needle-sharp
hobnails. This is one spot where
a boy’s got to remember not to
put his finger in the dike.”

At that moment Fats Jordan,
who’d seemed lost in brooding
too, struck a chilling but authori-
tative chord on his guitar.

“Gonna be a pang

“Leavin’ space,” (he sang)

“Gonna be a pang!”

The proctor couldn’t help winc-
ing again. “That’s all very well,”
he said sharply, “and I’m glad
you’re taking this realistically.

THE BEAT CLUSTER

161

But hadn’t you better be getting
a move on?”

Fats Jordan paused with his
hand above the strings. “How do
you mean, Mister Proctor?” he
asked.

“I mean getting your first fifty
ready for the down jump!”

“Oh, that,” Fats said and
paused reflectively. “Well, now,
Mr. Proctor, thafs going to take
a little time.”

The proctor snorted. “Two
hours!” he said sharply and, grab-
bing at the nylon line he’d had
the foresight to trail into the Beat
Cluster behind him (rather like
Theseus venturing into the Mino-
taur’s probably equally smelly
labyrinth), he swiftly made his
way out of the Big Igloo, hand
over hand, by way of the green
tunnel.

The Brainess giggled. Fats
frowned at her solemnly. The gig-
gling was cut off. To cover her
embarrassment the Brainess be-
gan to hum the tune to one of
her semi-private songs:

“Eskimos of space are we

“In our igloos falling free.

“We are space’s Esquimaux,

“Fearless vacuum-chewing
hawks.”

Fats tossed Gussy his guitar,
which set him spinning very slow-
ly. As he rotated, precessing a
little, he ticked off points to his

comrades on his stubby, ripe-
banana-clustered fingers.

“Somebody gonna have to tell
the research boys we’re callin’ off
the art show an’ the ballet an’ ter-
minatin’ jazz Fridays. Likewise
the Great Books course an’ Satur-
day poker. Might as well inform
our friends of Edison and Con-
vair at the same time that they’re
gonna have to hold the 3D chess
and 3D go tournaments at their
place, unless they can get the
new Administrator to donate
them our quarters when we leave
— which I doubt. I imagine he’ll
tote the Cluster off a ways and
use the igloos for target practice.
With the self-sealin’ they should
hold shape a long time.

“But don’t exactly tell the re-
search boys when we’re goin’ or
why. Play it mysterioso.

“Meanwhile the gals gotta start
sewin’ us some ground clothes.
Warm and decent. And we all
gotta get our papers ready for
the customs men, though I’m
afraid most of us ain’t kept nothin’
but Davis passports. Heck, some
of you are probably here on Nan-
sen passports.

“An’ we better pool our credits
to buy wheelchairs and dollies
groundside for such of us as are
gonna need ’em.” Fats looked
back and forth dolefully from
Guru Ishpingham’s interwoven
emaciation to his own hyper-port-
liness.

162

GALAXY

1%/IEANWHILE a space-diver
had approached the Big Ig-
loo from the direction of the satel-
lite, entered the folds of a limp
blister, zipped it shut behind him
and unzipped the slit leading in-
side. The blister filled with a dull
pop and the diver pushed inside
through the lips. With a sharp
effort he zipped them shut be-
hind him, then threw back his
helmet.

“Condition Red!” he cried. “The
new Administrator’s planning to
ship us all groundside! I got it
straight from the Police Chief.
The new A’s taking those old de-
portation orders seriously and
he’s holding the — ”

“We know all about that, Trace
Davis,” Fats interrupted him.
“The new A’s proctor’s been
here.”

“Well, what are you going to
do about it?” the other demanded.

“Nothin’,” Fats serenely in-
formed the flushed and shock-
headed diver. “We’re comply in’.
You, Trace — ” he pointed a finger
— “get out of that suit. We’re
auctionin’ it off ’long with all the
rest of our unworldly goods. The
research boys’ll be eager to bid
on it. For fun-diving our space-
suits are the pinnacle.”

A carrot-topped head thrust
out of the blue tunnel. “Hey, Fats,
we’re broadcasting,” its freckled
owner called accusingly. “You’re
on in thirty seconds!”

“Baby, I clean forgot,” Fats
said. He sighed and shrugged.
“Guess I gotta tell our downside
fans the inglorious news. Remem-
ber all my special instructions,
chillun. Share ’em out among
you.” He grabbed Gussy Friml’s
black ankle as it swung past him
and shoved off on it, coasting
toward the blue tunnel at about
one fifth the velocity with which
Gussy receded from him in the
opposite direction.

“Hey, Fats,” Gussy called to
him as she bounced gently off the
sun-quilt, “you got any general
message for us?”

“Yeah,” Fats replied, still ro-
tating as he coasted and smiling
as he rotated. “Make more guk,
chillun. Yeah,” he repeated as he
disappeared into the blue tunnel,
“take off the growth checks an’
make mo’ guk.”

CEVEN seconds later he was
^ floating beside the spherical
mike of the Beat Cluster’s short-
wave station. The bright instru-
ments and heads of the Small
Jazz Ensemble were all clustered
in, sounding a last chord, while
their foreshortened feet waved
around the periphery. The half
dozen of them, counting Fats,
were like friendly fish nosing up
to the single black olive of the
mike. Fats had his eyes on the
Earth, a little more than half
night now and about as big as

THE BEAT CLUSTER

163

the snare drum standing out from
the percussion rack Jordy had his
legs scissored around. It was good,
Fats thought, to see who you
were talking to.

“Greetings, groundsiders,” he
said softly when the last echo
had come back from the sealing-
silk and died in the sun-quilt.
“This is that ever-hateful voice
from outer space, the voice of
your old tormentor Fats Jordan,
advertising no pickle juice.” Fats
actually said “advertising,” not
“advertisin’ ” — his diction always
improved when he was on
vacuum.

“And for a change, folks, I’m
going to take this space to tell
you something about us. No jokes
this time, just tedious talk. I got
a reason, a real serious reason,
but I ain’t saying what it is for
a minute.”

He continued, “You look
mighty cozy down there, mighty
cozy from where we’re floating.
Because we’re way out here, you
know. Out of this world, to quote
the man. A good twenty thousand
miles out, Captain Nemo.

“Or we’re up here, if it sounds
better to you that way. Way over
your head. Up here with the stars
and the flaming sun and the hot-
cold vacuum, orbiting around
Earth in our crazy balloons that
look like a cluster of dingy glass
grapes.”

The band had begun to blow

softly again, weaving a cool back-
ground to Fat’s lazy phrases.

“Yes, the boys and girls are in
space now, groundsiders. We’ve
found the cheap way here, the
back door. The wild ones who
yesterday Would have headed for
the Village or the Quarter or Big
Sur, the Left Bank or North
Beach, or just packed up their
Zen Buddhism and hit the road,
are out here now, digging cool
sounds as they fall round and
round Dear Old Dirty. And folks,
ain’t you just a little glad we’re
gone?”

^T^HE band coasted into a phrase
that was like the lazy swing
of a hammock.

“Our cold-water flats have
climbed. Our lofts have gone aloft.
We’ve cut our pads loose from
the cities and floated them above
the stratosphere. It was a stiff drag
for our motorcycles, Dad, but we
made it. And ain’t you a mite
delighted to be rid of us? I know
we’re not all up here. But the
worst of us are.

“You know, people once pic-
tured the conquest of space en-
tirely in terms of military out-
posts and machine precision.”
Here Burr’s trumpet blew a
crooked little battle cry. “They
didn’t leave any room in their
pictures for the drifters and
dreamers, the rebels and no-goods
(like me, folks!) who are up here

164

GALAXY

~J r i '***-

right now, orbiting with ^ few <
pounds of oxygen and"'aT couple
of gobs of guk (and a few cock-
roaches, sure, and maybe even a
few mice, though we keep a cat)
inside a cluster of smelly old bal-
loons.

“That’s a laugh in itself: the
antique vehicle that first took
man off the ground also being the
first to give him cheap living
quarters outside the atmosphere.
Primitive balloons floated free in
the grip of the wind; we fall free
in the clutch of gravity. A bal-
loon’s a symbol, you know, folks.

A symbol of dreams and hopes
and easily-punctured illusions. Be-
cause a balloon’s a kind of bubble.
But bubbles can be tough.”

Led by Jordy’s drums, the band
worked into the Blue Ox theme
from the Paul Bunyan Suite.

“Tough the same way the hem-
lock tents and sod huts of the
American settlers were tough. We
got out into space, a lot of us did,
the same way the Irish and Finns
got west. They built the long rail-
roads. We built the big satellites.”

Here the band shifted to the
Axe theme;

“I was a welder myself. I came
into space with a bunch of other
galoots to help stitch together Re-
search Satellite One. I didn’t like
the barracks they put us in, so I.
made myself a little private home ;
f sealingsilk, a material whic^l
was used only for storing]

G A.IAX

liquids and gases — nobody’d even
thought of it for human habita-
tion. I started to meditate there
in my bubble and I came to grips
with a few half-ultimates and I
got to like it real well in space.
Same thing happened to a few of
the other galoots. You know, folks,
a guy who’s wacky enough to
wrestle sheet aluminum in vac-
uum in a spider suit may very
well be wacky enough to get to
really like stars and weightless-
ness and all the rest of it.

“When the construction job was
done and the big research outfits
moved in, we balloon men stayed
on. It took some wangling but we
managed. We weren’t costing the
Government much. And it was
mighty convenient for them to
have us around for odd jobs.

I ^HAT was the nucleus of our
squatter cluster. The space
roustabouts and roughnecks came
first. The artists and oddballs, who
have a different kind of toughness,
followed. They got wind of what
our life was like and they bought,
bummed or conned their way up
here. Some got space research
jobs and shifted over to us at the
ends of their stints. Others came
up on awards trips and managed
to get lost from their parties and
accidentally find us. They brought
their tapes and instruments with
them, their sketchbooks and typ-
ers; some even smuggled up their

own balloons. Most of them
learned to do some sort of space
work — it’s good insurance on
staying aloft. But don’t get me
wrong. We’re none of us work-
crazy. Actually we’re the laziest
cats in the cosmos: the ones who
couldn’t bear the thought of carry-
ing their own weight around
every day of their lives! We most-
ly only toil when we have to have
money for extras or when there’s
a job that’s just got to be done.
We’re the dreamers and funsters,
the singers and studiers. We
leave the ‘to the stars by hard
ways’ business to our friends the
space marines. When we use the
‘ad astra per aspera’ motto (was
it your high school’s too?) we
change the last word to asparagus
— maybe partly to honor the
green guk we grow to get us oxy-
gen (so we won’t be chiseling too
much gas from the Government)
and to commemorate the food-
yeasts and the other stuff we
grow from our garbage.

“What sort of life do we have
up here? How can we stand it
cooped up in a lot of stinking
balloons? Man, we’re free out
here, really free for the first time.
We’re floating, literally. Gravity
can’t bow our backs or break our
arches or tame our ideas. You
know, it’s only out here that stu-
pid people like us can really
think. The weightlessness gets our
thoughts and we can sort them.

THE BEAT CLUSTER

167

Ideas grow out here like nowhere
else — it’s the right environment
for them.

“Anybody can get into space if
he wants to hard enough. The
ticket is a dream.

“That’s our story, folks. We
took the space road because it
was the only frontier left. We had
to come out, just because space
was here, like the man who
climbed the mountain, like the
first man who skin-dove into the
green deeps. Like the first man
who envied a bird or a shooting
star.”

The music had softly soared
with Fat’s words. Now it died with
them and when he spoke again it
was without accompaniment, just
a flat lonely voice.

“But that isn’t quite the end
of the story, folks. I told you I
had something serious to impart
— serious to us anyway. It looks
like we’re not going to be able
to stay in space, folks. We’ve been
told to get out. Because we’re the
wrong sort of people. Because we
don’t have the legal right to stay
here, only the right that’s con-
veyed by a dream.

“Maybe there’s real justice in
it. Maybe we’ve sat too long in
the starbird seat. Maybe the beat
generation doesn’t belong in
space. Maybe space belongs to
soldiers and the civil service, with
a slice of it for the research boys.
Maybe there’s somebody who

wants to be in space more than
we do. Maybe we deserve our
comedownance. I wouldn’t know.

“So get ready for a jolt, folks.
We’re coming back! If you don't
want to see us, or if you think
we ought to be kept safely
cooped up here for any reason,
you just might let the President
know.

“This is the Beat Cluster, folks,
signing off.”

A S FATS and the band pushed
away from each other, Fats
saw that the little local audience
in the sending balloon had grown
and that not all new arrivals were
fellow floaters.

“Fats, what’s this nonsense
about you people privatizing your
activities and excluding research
personnel?” a grizzle-haired
stringbean demanded. “You can’t
cut off recreation that way. I de-
pend on the Cluster to keep my
electron bugs happily abnormal.
We even mention it downside
in recruiting personnel — though
we don’t put it in print.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Thoms,” Fats
said. “No offense meant to you
or to General Electric. But I got
no time to explain. Ask somebody
else.”

“Whatdya mean, no offense?”
the other demanded, grabbing at
the purple shorts. “What are you
trying to do, segregate the
squares in space? What’s wrong

168

GALAXY

with research? Aren’t we good
enough for you?”

“Yes,” put in Rumpleman of
Convair, “and while you’re doing
that would you kindly throw
some light on this directive we
just received from the new A —
that the Cluster’s off-bounds to us
and that all dating between re-
search personnel and Cluster
girls must stop? Did you put the
new A up to that, Fats?”

“Not exactly,” Fats said. “Look,
boys, let up on me. I got work to
do.”

“Work!” Rumpleman snorted.

“Don’t think you’re going to
get away with it,” Thoms warned
Fats. “We’re going to protest.
Why, the Old Man is frantic about
the 3D chess tournament. He
says the Brain’s the only real
competition he has up here.”
(The Old Man was Hubert Wil-
lis, guiding genius of the open
bevatron on the other side of the
satellite.)

“The other research outfits are
kicking up a fuss too,” Trace
Davis put in. “We spread the
news like you said, and they say
we can’t walk out on them this
way.”

“Allied Microbiotics,” Gussy
Friml said, “wants to know who’s
going to take over the experi-
ments on unshielded guk societies
in freefall that we’ve been run-
ning for them in the Cluster.”

Two of the newcomers had

slightly more confidential mes-
sages for Fats.

Allison of Convair said, “I
wouldn’t tell you, except I think
you’ve guessed, that I’ve been
using the Beat Cluster as a pilot
study in the psychology of an-
archic human societies in freefall.
If you cut yourself off from us,
I’m in a hole.”

“It’s mighty friendly of you
to feel that way,” Fats said, “but
right now I got to rush.”

OPACE Marines Sergeant Gom-
^ bert, satellite police chief,
drew Fats aside and said, “I don’t
know why you’re giving research
a false impression of what’s hap-
pening, but they’ll find out the
truth soon enough and I suppose
you have your own sweet insidi-
ous reasons. Meanwhile I’m here
to tell you that I can’t spare the
men to police your exodus. As
you know, you old corner-cutter,
this place is run more like a na-
tional park than a military post,
in spite of its theoretical high se-
curity status. I’m going to have to
ask you to handle the show your-
self, using your best judgment.”

“We’ll certainly work hard at
it, Chief,” Fats said. “Hey, every-
body, get cracking!”

“Understand,” Gombert con-
tinued, his expression very fierce,
“I’m wholly on the side of official-
dom. I’ll be officially overjoyed
to see the last of you floaters. It

THE BEAT CLUSTER

169

just so happens that at the mo-
ment I’m short-handed.”

“I understand,” Fats said soft-
ly, then bellowed, “On the jump,
everybody!”

But at sunset the new A’s proc-
tor was again facing him, right-
side-up this time, in the Big Igloo.

“Your first fifty were due at the
boarding tube an hour ago,” the
proctor began ominously.

“That’s right,” Fats assured
him. “It just turns out we’re going
to need a little more time.”
“What’s holding you up?”
“We’re getting ready, Mr.
Proctor,” Fats said. “See how
busy everybody is?”

A half dozen figures were
rhythmically diving around the
Big Igloo, folding the sun-quilt.
The sun’s disk had dipped be-
hind the Earth and only its wild
corona showed, pale hair stream-
ing across the star-fields. The
Earth had gone into its dark
phase, except for the faint un-
balanced halo of sunlight bent by
the atmosphere and for the faint
dot-dot-dot of glows that were
the Los Angeles-Chicago-New
York line. Soft yellow lights
sprang up here and there in the
Cluster as it prepared for its
short night. The transparent bal-
loons seemed to vanish, leaving
a band of people camped among
the stars.

The proctor said, “We know
you’ve been getting some unof-

ficial sympathy from research
and even the MPs. Don’t depend
on it. The new Administrator can
create special deputies to enforce
the deportation orders.”

“He certainly can,” Fats agreed
earnestly, “but he don’t need to.
We’re going ahead with it all, Mr.
Proctor, as fast as we’re able.
F’rinstance, our groundclothes
ain’t sewed yet. You wouldn’t
want us arriving downside half
naked an’ givin’ the sat’ a bad
reputation. So just let us work an’
don’t joggle our elbow.”

The proctor snorted. He said,
“Let’s not waste each other’s
time. You know, if you force us
to do it, we can cut off your
oxygen.”

r I TIERE was a moment’s si-
■*- lence. Then from the side
Trace Davis said loudly, “Listen
to that! Listen to a man who’d
solve the groundside housing
problem by cutting off the water
to the slums.”

But Fats frowned at Trace and
said quietly only, “If Mr. Proctor
shut down on our air, he’d only
be doing the satellite a disservice.
Right now our algae are produc-
ing a shade more oxy than we
burn. We’ve upped the guk pro-
duction. If you don’t believe me,
Mr. Proctor, you can ask the
atmosphere boys to check.”

“Even if you do have enough
oxygen,” the proctor retorted,

170

GALAXY

“you need our forced ventilation
to keep your air moving. Lacking
gravity convection, you’d suffo-
cate in your own exhaled breath.”
“We got our fans ready, battery
driven,” Fats told him.

“You’ve got no place to mount
them, no rigid framework,” the
proctor objected.

“They’ll mount on harnesses
near each tunnel mouth,” Fats
said imperturbably. “Without
gravity they’ll climb away from
the tunnel mouths and ride the
taut harness. Besides, we’re not
above hand labor if it’s necessary.
We could use punkahs.”

“Air’s not the only problem,”
the proctor interjected. “We can
cut off your food. You’ve been
living on handouts.”

“Right now,” Fats said softly,
“we’re living half on yeasts grown
from our own personal garbage.
Living well, as you can see by a
look at me. And if necessary we
can do as much better than half
as we have to. We’re farmers,
man.”

“We can seal off the Cluster,”
the proctor snapped back, “and
set you adrift. The orders allow
it.”

Fats replied, “Why not? It
would make a very interesting
day-to-day drama for the ground-
side public and for the food
chemists — seeing just how long
we can maintain a flourishing
ecology.”

The proctor grabbed at his
nylon line. “I’m going to report
your attitude to the new Admin-
istrator as hostile,” he sputtered.
“You’ll hear from us again short-
ly.”

“Give him our greetings when
you do,” Fats said. “We haven’t
had opportunity to offer them.
And there’s one other thing,” he
called after the proctor, “I notice
you hold your nose mighty rigid
in here. It’s a waste of energy.
If you’d just steel yourself and
take three deep breaths you’d
never notice our stink again.”

r ¥' , HE proctor bumped into the
tunnel side in his haste to
be gone. Nobody laughed, which
doubled the embarrassment. If
they’d have laughed he could
have cursed. Now he had to bot-
tle up his indignation until he
could discharge it in his report
to the new Administrator.

But even this outlet was denied
him.

“Don’t tell me a word,” the
new Administrator snapped at his
proctor as the latter zipped into
the aluminum office. “The depor-
tation is canceled. I’ll tell you
about it, but if you tell anybody
else I’ll down- jump you. In the
last twenty minutes I’ve had mes-
sages direct from the Space Mar-
shal and the President We must
not disturb the Beat Cluster be-
cause of public opinion and

THE BEAT CLUSTER

171

because, although they don’t
know it, they’re a pilot experi-
ment in the free migration of
people into space.” (“Where else,
Joel,” the President had said, “do
you think we’re going to get
people to go willingly off the
Earth and achieve a balanced ex-
istence, using their own waste
products? Besides, they’re a float-
ing labor pool for the satellites.
And Joel, do you realize Jordan’s
broadcast is getting as much at-
tention as the Russian landings
on Ganymede?”) The new Ad-
ministrator groaned softly and
asked the Unseen, “Why don’t
they tell a new man these things
before he makes a fool of him-
self?”

Back in the Beat Cluster, Fats
struck the last chord of “Glow
Little Glow Worm.” Slowly the
full moon rose over the satellite,

dimming the soft yellow lights
that seemed to float in free space.
The immemorial white globe of
Luna was a little bit bigger than
when viewed from Earth and its
surface markings were more
sharply etched. The craters of
Tycho and Copernicus stood out
by reason of the bright ray sys-
tems shooting out from them and
the little dark smudge of the
Mare Crisium looked like a
curled black kitten. Fats led
those around him into a new
song:

“Gonna be a pang
“Leavin’ space,

“Gonna be a pang!

“Gonna be a pang
“Leavin’ space,

“So we won’t go!”

—FRITZ LEIBER

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

FORECAST

The big news for December is Poul Anderson, beginning a major
science-fiction novel that we're proud to present, uncut, as a two-part serial:
The Day After Doomsday. It's Anderson's latest, and not far from being
his best ever — which, as every science-fiction reader well knows, is very
good indeed.

But there's more. Three fine novelettes, including Algis Budrys with
Wall of Crystal, Eye of Night and Margaret St. Clair with a classification-
defying exercise in wit and whimsy. An Old Fashioned Bird Christmas. Plus
Willy Ley . . . plus the usual lineup of shorts . . . plus (we hope; if the type
will stretch to hold it) an unusual article. It's going to be a memorable
issue, and that's a promise. Say, isn't this a good time to subscribe?

172

GALAXY

s-~k SHELF

V7TJRI GAGARIN proved yet
again that there is no substi-
tute for scientific knowhow, hence
this column devoted entirely to
Junior Education:

THE ASTRONAUTS by Martin
Caidin. E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.

The limited payloads of our
rockets have necessitated the
Mercury Project approach to our
first spaceflight. Despite safe-
guards and fail-safe devices, our
attempts are marginal.

Caidin’s copiously illustrated
book fills in the information gap

about America’s seven astronauts,
the men who hold the key to our
chances. They are so remarkably
able that the results of the tests
awed the medical and technical
testers. “Some of them actually
kept up with (the tests) and they
aren’t designed to be kept up
with!”

SPACE VOLUNTEERS by Ter-
ence Kay. Harper & Brothers.

Behind each invention or
achievement are countless hours
of tedious preparation. Newton
“stood on the shoulders of giants.”

★ ★★★★ SHELF

173

Einstein theorized about data
observed by others.

Our seven astronauts will go
into space armed with equipment
and knowledge garnered by hun-
dreds of “space volunteers” like
Col. Stapp of rocket sled fame;
Capt. Simons of the 20-mile-high
balloon flight and scores of anon-
ymous test pilots, centrifuge rid-
ers, ejection seat testers, etc., etc.

Kay’s informative book is
about unsung men who make the
headlines possible.

NINETY SECONDS TO SPACE
by Jules Bergman. Hanover
House.

The book, an extravagantly il-
lustrated account of the X-15 and
its predecessors, refers in title to
the total powered flight time of
the rocket craft. It is also the
story of the men who fly in (and
occasionally die in) these barrier-
shattering flying laboratories. As
an inspirational story of hard
work, research, experimentation
and pure bravery, this book is
tough to beat.

COUNTDOWN by William Roy
Shelton. Little, Brown & Co.

“The story of Cape Canaveral,”
reads the subtitle of this book
which chronicles the growth of
America’s prime rocket-launch
area from a snake’s paradise to

the most exciting piece of real-
estate in the western hemisphere.
It is also the life story of many
rockets — accident-prone Van-
guard, reliable Jupiter, Thor, At-
las, Titan, Polaris. The Life and
Time author, witness to almost
all of the shoots, has written a
breezy, interest-sustaining story.

THE MAN WHO RODE THE
THUNDER by W. H. Rankin.
Prentice Hall, Inc.

Marine Lt. Col. Rankin made
headlines when he bailed out of
a supersonic jet ten miles up with-
out a pressure suit and then de-
scended through a thunderstorm.
The return to earth took forty
minutes instead of ten, but a frail
human being survived the unbe-
lievable violence of the thunder,
lightning and deluge.

This thrilling true adventure
makes one speculate upon what
extremes of physical anguish the
new breed of spacemen will have
to endure.

POLARIS! by James Baar and
William E. Howard. Harcourt,
Brace & Co.

Firing a rocket 1200 miles
from a submerged nuclear sub-
marine to a pinpointed target
seems a near-impossibility. So it
is — but it only took the Navy
4 V 2 years to accomplish the im-

174

GALAXY

possible. Of prime importance
was a shrewd decision to switch
in midstream from the liquid fuel
Army Jupiter missile to the solid
fuel Polaris.

The authors present a segment
of missile history that should
serve as inspiration to all good
damn-the-red-taper-ers.

THE FASCINATING WORLD
OF ASTRONOMY by R. S.
Richardson. McGraw Hill Book
Co., Inc.

Dr. Richardson, formerly of
Palomar and Mt. Wilson, employ-
ing the question-and-answer tech-
nique, poses questions that lay-
men ask most:

“What makes the sun shine?”

“What created the planets?”

“What is the farthest the eye
can see?”

The good doctor has written an
eminently readable and informa-
tive book.

THE BOOK OF THE ATOM by
Leonard de Vries. The Macmil-
lan Co.

Author de Vries’s bated-breath
treatment of his subject enhances
its already enormous appeal.
These chapter headings convey
the tone: “A Horrible Suspicion;”
“The Greatest Race of All Time;”
“Leviathan in Chains;” “A Crack-
er Full of Surprises.”

CAREERS AND OPPORTUNI-
TIES IN SCIENCE by Philip
Pollack. E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.

The stupendous strides of tech-
nology have made necessary this
revision of a 1945 career guide.
Industries and products undreamt
of 15 years ago have opened up
job opportunities equally new.
Pollack’s fine book details oppor-
tunities each field offers, some
background fill-in, necessary
training and remunerative aver-
ages. One message comes in loud
and clear — advanced study, to
and including Ph.D., pays off!

SATURDAY SCIENCE edited
by Andrew Bluemle. E. P. Dut-
ton & Co.

Westinghouse sponsors the an-
nual Science Talent Search. It
also offers a program for all honor
high school students in the Pitts-
burgh area, a series of lectures
by members of the Westinghouse
Research Labs which were
adapted for this excellent, pro-
vocative book. The biographical
vignettes heading each chapter
should also serve as inspiration
for aspiration and emulation.

FROM CELL TO TEST TUBE
by R. W. Chambers and A. S.
Payne. Chas. Scribner’s Sons.

Biochemistry, the chemistry of
living things, is a young science.

* ★ ★ ★ ★ SHELF

175

Why? Because man had to get
over the fever of discovery of the
vast new world of micro-organ-
isms before he could begin to ask
for answers to: Why and how do
the chemical compounds called
Life react and reproduce?

The book is a fine combination
of provocative subject and intel-
ligent presentation.

THE ROMANCE OF WEIGHTS
AND MEASURES by Keith Gor-
don Irwin. The Viking Press.

Irwin’s special interest is the
English system; its origins,
changes and present complexity.
He presents the beautiful simplic-
ity of decimal-system measure-
ment in Anglo-Saxon England a
millenium ago and the succeeding
chaos created by Norman con-
quest and foreign trade.

In his fascinating book, Irwin,
like Asimov, proves that the sub-
ject of weights and measures can
be as engrossing as any facet of
human development.

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF
TARQUIN THE ETRUSCAN by
C. M. Franzero. The John Day
Co., Inc.

That the Etruscans are a
people of mystery is peculiar be-
cause Etruria, even more than
Greece, is the cornerstone of
Roman civilization. Rome took

over intact the Etruscan system
of government, army organiza-
tion, civil engineering. The found-
er of the Tarquinian dynasty of
Roman kings was Etruscan.

However, the infamous “Rape
of Lucrece” touched off the de-
struction, in repugnance, by the
Romans of every available Etrus-
can relic.

Franzero’s minutely detailed
book makes the utmost of myth
and conjecture.

THE LOST PHARAOHS by
Leonard Cottrell. Holt, Rine-
hart and Winston.

Archeology being scientific de-
tection raised to the heights, it is
hardly surprising that Cottrell’s
exciting book reads like a detec-
tive story. Instead of tracking
down culprits, however, Egyptolo-
gists uncover cadavers buried for
millenia. In one fantastic dis-
covery, over thirty Pharaohs were
found in a common tomb where
they had been hastily reburied
more than 3000 years ago to save
them from the ravages of tomb
robbers!

SEVEN MILES DOWN by
Jacques Piccard and Robert S.
Dietz. G. P. Putnam’s Sons.

Auguste Piccard, inventor of
the bathyscaph, wrote phlegmat-
ically in Earth, Sea and Sky of

176

GALAXY

his adventures in stratosphere
and abyss. His son, Jacques, pilot
on the deep dives undertaken by
the bathyscaphs FNRS-2 and
Trieste, is much more demonstra-
tive in his account, particularly of
touchdown in the deepest hole on
earth, 35,800 feet down in Chal-
lenger Deep. Adventure lies in
Inner as well as Outer Space.

EDISON EXPERIMENTS YOU
CAN DO. Harper & Bros.

Methodical Tom Edison made
notes on every experiment he
ever conducted. During his life--
time, he filled 3400 notebooks of
200 pages each!

In this fascinating book pre-
pared by the Edison Foundation,
the reader can follow the footsteps
of the great man, in some cases
from actual facsimiles of the
original notes, and using simple
materials.

SCIENCE PUZZLERS by Mar-
tin Gardner. The Viking Press.

First impression is that Gard-
ner has written an ordinary book
of stunts. However, each puzzler
is just that; it makes the reader
ponder even though no special
experimental equipment is
needed.

Chemistry, astronomy, topol-
ogy, psychology, etc. are contribu-
tors to the mind-teasers.

THE WILD ROCKET by Peggy
Hoffman. Westminster Press.

An indisputably fit subject for
a science-fiction juvenile is the
planning, building and firing of a
home-made, six-foot, solid-propel-
lant rocket by an untutored back-
woods boy. These basic facts are
mere background however, for
Mrs. Hoffman’s warm, tender
story of the guts and sheer deter-
mination of the orphaned, love-
less youth and the understanding
he encounters.

Rating (12-15): **** 1 / 2

DANNY DUNN ON THE
OCEAN FLOOR by Jay Williams
ami Raymond Ahrashkin. Whit-
tlesey House.

Danny’s adventures are always
based on a solid science founda-
tion, once the authors’ usually
wild main premise is digested.
Currently Danny, in cooking a
plastic mixture of Professor Bull-
finch’s, employer of Danny’s wid-
owed mother, achieves a trans-
parent plastic of super-strength
— but through the sheer neglect
of his duties.

In short order, jovial Prof. Bull-
finch, acidulous Dr. Grimes, Dan-
ny and friends Irene and Joe are
off to explore the ocean bottom
in a transparent, super-strength
bathyscaphe.

Rating (8-12) ****i/ 2

— FLOYD C. GALE

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ SHELF

177

tie spy

81 Til
ELEIMOR

He was dangerously insane.

He threatened to destroy
everything that was noble and
decent — including my date
with my girl!

By DONALD E. WESTLAKE
Illustrated by WEST

W HEN the elevator didn’t
come, that just made
the day perfect. A
broken egg yolk, a stuck zipper,
a feedback in the aircon exhaust,
the window sticking at full trans-
parency — well, I won’t go
through the whole sorry list. Suf-
fice it to say that when the ele-
vator didn’t come, that put the
roof on the city, as they say.

It was just one of those days.
Everybody gets them. Days when
you’re lucky in you make it to
nightfall with no bones broken.

But of all times for it to hap-
pen! For literally months I’d been
building my courage up. And
finally, just today, I had made up
my mind to do it — to propose to
Linda. I’d called her second thing
this morning — right after the
egg yolk — and invited myself
down to her place. “Ten o’clock,”
she’d said, smiling sweetly at me
out of the phone. She knew why
I wanted to talk to her. And

178

GALAXY

when Linda said ten o’clock, she
meant ten o’clock.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t
mean that Linda’s a perfectionist
or a harridan or anything like
that. Far from it. But she does
have a fixation on that one sub-
ject of punctuality. The result of
her job, of course. She was an ore-
sled dispatcher. Ore-sleds, being
robots, were invariably punctual.
If an ore-sled didn’t return on
time, no one waited for it. They
simply knew that it had been
captured by some other Project
and had blown itself up.

Well, of course, after working
as an ore-sled dispatcher for three
years, Linda quite naturally was a
bit obsessed. I remember one
time, shortly after we’d started
dating, when I arrived at her
place five minutes late and found
her having hysterics. She thought
I’d been killed. She couldn’t
visualize anything less than that
keeping me from arriving at the
designated moment. When I told
her what actually had happened
— I’d broken a shoe lace — she
refused to speak to me for four
days.

And then the elevator didn’t
come.

¥ TNTIL then, I’d managed
^ somehow to keep the day’s
minor disasters from ruining my
mood. Even while eating that hor-
rible egg — I couldn’t very well

throw it away, broken yolk or
no; it was my breakfast allotment
and I was hungry — and while
hurriedly jury-rigging drapery
across that gaspingly transparent
window — one hundred and fifty-
three stories straight down to slag
— I kept going over and over my
prepared proposal speeches, try-
ing to select the most effective
one.

I had a Whimsical Approach:
“Honey, I see there’s a nice little
Non-P apartment available up on
one seventy-three.” And I had a
Romantic Approach: “Darling, I
can’t live without you at the mo-
ment. Temporarily, I’m madly in
love with you. I want to share
my life with you for a while. Will
you be provisionally mine?” I
even had a Straightforward Ap-
proach: “Linda, I’m going to be
needing a wife for at least a year
or two, and I can’t think of any-
one I would rather spend that
time with than you.”

Actually, though I wouldn’t
even have admitted this to Linda,
much less to anyone else, I loved
her in more than a Non-P way.
But even if we both had been
genetically desirable (neither of
us were) I knew that Linda rel-
ished her freedom and independ-
ence too much to ever contract
for any kind of marriage other
than Non-P — Non-Permanent,
No Progeny.

So I rehearsed my various ap-

THE SPY IN THE ELEVATOR

179

proaches, realizing that when the
time came I would probably be
so tongue-tied I’d be capable of
no more than a blurted, “Will you
marry me?” and I struggled with
zippers and malfunctioning air-
cons, and I managed somehow to
leave the apartment at five min-
utes to ten.

Linda lived down on the hun-
dred fortieth floor, thirteen stories
away. It never took more than
two or three minutes to get to
her place, so I was giving myself
plenty of time.

But then the elevator didn’t
come.

I pushed the button, waited,
and nothing happened. I couldn’t
understand it.

The elevator had always
arrived before, within thirty sec-
onds of the button being pushed.
This was a local stop, with
an elevator that traveled be-
tween the hundred thirty-third
floor and the hundred sixty-
seventh floor, where it was pos-
sible to make connections for
either the next local or for the
express. So it couldn’t be more
than twenty stories away. And
this was a non-rush hour.

I pushed the button again, and
then I waited some more. I looked
at my watch and it was three
minutes to ten. Two minutes, and
no elevator! If it didn’t arrive this
instant, this second, I would be
late.

It didn’t arrive.

I vacillated, not knowing what
to do next. Stay, hoping the ele-
vator would come after all? Or
hurry back to the apartment and
call Linda, to give her advance
warning that I would be late?

Ten more seconds, and still no
elevator. I chose the second al-
ternative, raced back down the
hall, and thumbed my way into
my apartment. I dialed Linda’s
number, and the screen lit up with
white letters on black: PRIVACY
DISCONNECTION.

Of course! Linda expected me
at any moment. And she knew
what I wanted to say to her, so
quite naturally she had discon-
nected the phone, to keep us from
being interrupted.

Frantic, I dashed from the
apartment again, back down the
hall to the elevator, and leaned
on that blasted button with all
my weight. Even if the elevator
should arrive right now, I would
still be almost a minute late.

No matter. It didn’t arrive.

I would have been in a howl-
ing rage anyway, but this impos-
sibility piled on top of all the
other annoyances and breakdowns
of the day was just too much. I
went into a frenzy, and kicked
the elevator door three times be-
fore I realized I was hurting my-
self more than I was hurting the
door. I limped back to the apart-
ment, fuming, slammed the door

180

GALAXY

behind me, grabbed the phone
book and looked up the number
of the Transit Staff. I dialed, pre-
pared to register a complaint so
loud they’d be able to hear me in
sub-basement three.

I got some more letters that
spelled: BUSY.

TT TOOK three tries before I
•■■got through to a hurried-look-
ing female receptionist. “My name
is Rice!” I bellowed. “Edmund
Rice! I live on the hundred and
fifty-third floor! I just rang for the
elevator and — ”

“The-elevator-is-disconnected.”
She said it very rapidly, as though
she were growing very used to
saying it.

It only stopped me for a sec-
ond. “Disconnected? What do
you mean disconnected? Eleva-
tors don’t get disconnected!” I told
her.

“We - will - resume - service - as -
soon- as -possible,” she rattled.
My bellowing was bouncing off
her like radiation off the Project
force-screen.

I changed tactics. First I in-
haled, making a production out
of it, giving myself a chance to
calm down a bit. And then I
asked, as rationally as you could
please, ‘Would you mind terribly
telling me why the elevator is
disconnected?”

“I-am-sorry-sir-but-that — ”

“Stop,” I said. I said it quietly,

too, but she stopped. I saw her
looking at me. She hadn’t done
that before, she’d merely gazed
blankly at her screen and par-
roted her responses.

But now she was actually look-
ing at me.

I took advantage of the fact.
Calmly, rationally, I said to her,
“I would like to tell you some-
thing, Miss. I would like to tell
you just what you people have
done to me by disconnecting the
elevator. You have ruined my
life.”

She blinked, open-mouthed.
“Ruined your life?”

“Precisely.” I found it neces-
sary to inhale again, even more
slowly than before. “I was on my
way,” I explained, “to propose to
a girl whom I dearly love. In
every way but one, she is the
perfect woman. Do you under-
stand me?”

She nodded, wide-eyed. I had
stumbled on a romantic, though I
was too preoccupied to notice it
at the time.

“In every way but one,” I con-
tinued. “She has one small im-
perfection, a fixation about punc-
tuality. And I was supposed to
meet her at ten o’clock. Tm late /”
I shook my fist at the screen. “Do
you realize what you’ve done,
disconnecting the elevator? Not
only won’t she marry me, she
won’t even speak to me! Not now!
Not after this!”

THE SPY IN THE ELEVATOR

181

“Sir,” she said tremulously,
“please don’t shout.”

“I’m not shouting!”

“Sir, I’m terribly sorry. I un-
derstand your — ”

“You understand?" I trembled
with speechless fury.

She looked all about her, and
then leaned closer to the screen,
revealing a cleavage that I was
too distraught at the moment to
pay any attention to. “We’re not
supposed to give this information
out, sir,” she said, her voice low,
“but I’m going to tell you, so
you’ll understand why we had to
do it. I think it’s perfectly awful
that it had to ruin things for you
this way. But the fact of the
matter is — ” she leaned even
closer to the screen — “there’s
a spy in the elevator.”

II

TT WAS my turn to be stunned.

1 just gaped at her. “A — a
what?”

“A spy. He was discovered on
the hundred forty-seventh floor,
and managed to get into the ele-
vator before the Army could catch
him. He jammed it between
floors. But the Army is doing
everything it can think of to get
him out.”

“Well — but why should there
be any problem about getting
him out?”

“He plugged in the manual

controls. We can’t control the
elevator from outside at all. And
when anyone tries to get into the
shaft, he aims the elevator at
them.”

That sounded impossible. “He
aims the elevator?”

“He runs it up and down the
shaft,” she explained, “trying to
crush anybody who goes after
him.”

“Oh,” I said. “So it might take
a while.”

She leaned so close this time
that even I, distracted as I was,
could hardly help but take note
of her cleavage. She whispered,
“They’re afraid they’ll have to
starve him out.”

“Oh, no!”

She nodded solemnly. “I’m ter-
ribly sorry, sir,” she said. Then
she glanced to her right, suddenly
straightened up again, and said,
“We-will-resume-service-as-soon-
as-possible.” Click. Blank screen.

For a minute or two, all I could
do was sit and absorb what I’d
been told. A spy in the elevator!
A spy who had managed to work
his way all the way up to the
hundred forty-seventh floor be-
fore being unmasked!

What in the world was the
matter with the Army? If things
were getting that lax, the Proj-
ect was doomed, force-screen or
no. Who knew how many more
spies there were in the Project,
still unsuspected?

182

GALAXY

Until that moment, the state of
siege in which we all lived had
had no reality for me. The Proj-
ect, after all, was self-sufficient
and completely enclosed. No one
ever left, no one ever entered.
Under our roof, we were a nation,
two hundred stories high. The
ever-present threat of other proj-
ects had never been more for
me — or for most other people
either, I suspected — than oc-
casional ore-sleds that didn’t re-
turn, occasional spies shot down
as they tried to sneak into the
building, occasional spies of our
own leaving the Project in tiny
radiation-proof cars, hoping to
get safely within another project
and bring back news of any im-
mediate threats and dangers that
project might be planning for us.
Most spies didn’t return; most
ore-sleds did. And within the
Project life was full, the knowl-
edge of external dangers merely
lurking at the backs of our
minds. After all, those external
dangers had been no more than
potential for decades, since what
Dr. Kilbillie called the Ungentle-
manly Gentleman’s War.

Dr. Kilbillie — Intermediate
Project History, when I was fif-
teen years old — had private
names for every major war of the
twentieth century. There was
the Ignoble Nobleman’s War, the
Racial Non-Racial War, and the
Ungentlemanly Gentleman’s War,

known to the textbooks of course
as World Wars One, Two, and
Three.

The rise of the Projects, ac-
cording to Dr. Kilbillie, was the
result of many many factors, but
two of the most important were
the population explosion and the
Treaty of Oslo. The population
explosion, of course, meant that
there was continuously more and
more people but never any more
space. So that housing, in the
historically short time of one cen-
tury, made a complete transfor-
mation from horizontal expansion
to vertical. Before 1900, the vast
majority of human beings lived
in tiny huts of from one to five
stories. By 2000, everybody lived
in Projects. From the very begin-
ning, small attempts were made
to make these Projects more than
dwelling places. By mid-century,
Projects (also called apartments
and co-ops) already included res-
taurants, shopping centers, baby-
sitting services, dry cleaners and
a host of other adjuncts. By the
end of the century, the Projects
were completely self-sufficient,
with food grown hydroponically
in the sub-basements, separate
floors set aside for schools and
churches and factories, robot ore-
sleds capable of seeking out raw
materials unavailable within the
Projects themselves and so on.
And all because of, among other
things, the population explosion.

THE SPY IN THE ELEVATOR

183

And the Treaty of Oslo.

It seems there was a power-
struggle between two sets of
then-existing nations (they were
something like Projects, only
horizontal instead of vertical)
and both sets were equipped
with atomic weapons. The
Treaty of Oslo began by stating
that atomic war was unthink-
able, and added that just in
case anyone happened to think
of it only tactical atomic weap-
ons could be used. No strategic
atomic weapons. (A tactical
weapon is something you use on
the soldiers, and a strategic
weapons is something you use on
the folks at home.) Oddly enough,
when somebody did think of the
war, both sides adhered to the
Treaty of Oslo, which meant that
no Projects were bombed.

Of course, they made up for
this as best they could by using
tactical atomic weapons all over
the place. After the war almost
the whole world was quite dan-
gerously radioactive. Except for
the Projects. Or at least those of
them which had in time installed
the force screens which had been
invented on the very eve of battle,
and which deflected radioactive
particles.

However, what with all of the
other treaties which were broken
during the Ungentlemanly Gentle-
man’s War, by the time it was
finished nobody was quite sure

any more who was on whose side.
That project over there on the
horizon might be an ally. And
then again it might not. Since
they weren’t sure either, it was
risky to expose yourself in order
to ask.

And so life went on, with little
to remind us of the dangers lurk-
ing Outside. The basic policy of
Eternal Vigilance and Instant
Preparedness was left to the
Army. The rest of us simply lived
our lives and let it go at that.

"OUT now there was a spy in
^-*the elevator.

When I thought of how deeply
he had penetrated our defenses,
and of how many others there
might be, still penetrating, I
shuddered. The walls were our
safeguards only so long as all po-
tential enemies were on the
other side of them.

I sat shaken, digesting this
news, until suddenly I remem-
bered Linda.

I leaped to my feet, reading
from my watch that it was now
ten-fifteen. I dashed once more
from the apartment and down
the hall to the elevator, praying
that the spy had been captured
by now and that Linda would
agree with me that a spy in the
elevator was good and sufficient
reason for me to be late.

He was still there. At least,
the elevator was still out.

184

GALAXY

I sagged against the wall,
thinking dismal thoughts. Then I
noticed the door to the right of
the elevator. Through that door
was the stairway.

I hadn’t paid any attention to
it before. No one ever uses the
stairs except adventurous young
boys playing cops and robbers,
running up and down from land-
ing to landing. I myself hadn’t set
foot on a flight of stairs since I
was twelve years old.

Actually, the whole idea of
stairs was ridiculous. We had
elevators, didn’t we? Usually, I
mean, when they didn’t contain
spies. So what was the use of
stairs?

Well, according to Dr. Kilbillie
(a walking library of unnecessary
information), the Project had
been built when there still had
been such things as municipal
governments (something to do
with cities, which were more or
less grouped Projects), and the
local municipal government had
had on its books a fire ordinance,
anachronistic even then, which
required a complete set of stairs
in every building constructed in
the city. Ergo, the Project had
stairs, thirty-two hundred of them.

And now, after all these years,
the stairs might prove useful
after all. It was only thirteen
flights to Linda’s floor. At sixteen
steps a flight, that meant two hun-
dred and eight steps.

Could I descend two hundred
and eight steps for my true love?
I could. If the door would open.

It would, though reluctantly.
Who knew how many years it
had been since last this door had
been opened? It squeaked and
wailed and groaned and finally
opened half way. I stepped
through to the musty, dusty land-
ing, took a deep breath, and
started down. Eight steps and a
landing, eight steps and a floor.
Eight steps and a landing, eight
steps and a floor.

On the landing between one
fifty and one forty-nine, there was
a smallish door. I paused, looking
curiously at it, and saw that at
one time letters had been painted
on it. The letters had long since
flaked away, but they left a
lighter residue of dust than that
which covered the rest of the
door. And so the words could still
be read, if with difficulty.

I read them. They said:

EMERGENCY ENTRANCE
ELEVATOR SHAFT
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL
ONLY

KEEP LOCKED
I frowned, wondering imme-
diately why this door wasn’t
being firmly guarded by at least
a platoon of Army men. Half a
dozen possible answers flashed
through my mind. The more re-

186

GALAXY

cent maps might simply have
omitted this discarded and un-
necessary door. It might be sealed
shut on the other side. The Army
might have caught be spy al-
ready. Somebody in authority
might simply have goofed.

As I stood there, pondering
these possibilities, the door
opened and the spy came out,
waving a gun.

Ill

TTE COULDN’T have been any-
one else but the spy. The gun,
in the first place. The fact that
he looked harried and upset and
terribly nervous, in the second
place. And, of course, the fact that
he came from the elevator shaft.

Looking back, I think he must
have been just as startled as
I when we came face to face like
that. We formed a brief tableau,
both of us open-mouthed and
wide-eyed.

Unfortunately, he recovered
first.

He closed the emergency door
behind him, quickly but quietly.
His gun stopped waving around
and instead pointed directly at
my middle. “Don’t move!” he
whispered harshly. “Don’t make
a sound!”

I did exactly as I was told. I
didn’t move and I didn’t make a
sound. Which left me quite free
to study him.

He was rather short, perhaps
three inches shorter than me,
with a bony high-cheekboned face
featuring deepset eyes and a thin-
lipped mouth. He wore gray
slacks and shirt, with brown slip-
pers on his feet. He looked exactly
like a spy . . . which is to say that
he didn’t look like a spy, he looked
overpoweringly ordinary. More
than anything else, he reminded
me of a rather taciturn milkman
who used to make deliveries to
my parents’ apartment.

His gaze darted this way and
that. Then he motioned with his
free hand at the descending stairs
and whispered, “Where do they
go?”

I had to clear my throat be-
fore I could speak. “All the way
down,” I said.

“Good,” he said — just as we
both heard a sudden raucous
squealing from perhaps four
flights down, a squealing which
could be nothing but the opening
of a hall door. It was followed by
the heavy thud of ascending boots.
The Army!

But if I had any visions of
imminent rescue, the spy dashed
them. He said, “Where do you
live?”

“One fifty-three,” I said. This
was a desperate and dangerous
man. I knew my only slim chance
of safety lay in answering his
questions promptly, cooperating
with him until and unless I saw

THE SPY IN THE ELEVATOR

187

a chance to either escape or cap-
ture him.

“All right,” he whispered. “Go
on.” He prodded me with the gun.

And so we went back up the
stairs to one fifty-three, and
stopped at the door. He stood
close behind me, the gun pressed
against my back, and grated in
my ear, “I’ll have this gun in my
pocket. If you make one false
move I’ll kill you. Now, we’re
going to your apartment. We’re
friends, just strolling along to-
gether. You got that?”

I nodded.

“All right. Let’s go.”

We went. I have never in my
life seen that long hall quite so
empty as it was right then. No
one came out of any of the apart-
ments, no one emerged from any
of the branch halls. We walked to
my apartment. I thumbed the
door open and we went inside.

Once the door was closed be-
hind us, he visibly relaxed, sag-
ging against the door, his gun
hand hanging limp at his side, a
nervous smile playing across his
lips.

I looked at him, judging the
distance between us, wondering if
I could leap at him before he
could bring the gun up again. But
he must have read my intentions
on my face. He straightened, shak-
ing his head. He said, “Don’t try
it. I don’t want to kill you. I don’t
want to “kill anybody, but I will

if I have to. We’ll just wait here
together until the hue and cry
passes us. Then I’ll tie you up, so
you won’t be able to sic your
Army on me too soon, and I’ll
leave. If you don’t try any silly
heroics, nothing will happen to
you.”

“You’ll never get away,” I told
him. “The whole Project is
alerted.”

“You let me worry about that,”
he said. He licked his lips. “You
got any chico coffee?”

“Yes.”

“Make me a cup. And don’t
get any bright ideas about dous-
ing me with boiling water.”

“I only have my day’s allot-
ment,” I protested. “Just enough
for two cups, lunch and dinner.”

“Two cups is fine,” he said.
“One for each of us.”

A ND NOW I had yet another
grudge against this blasted
spy. Which reminded me again of
Linda. From the looks of things,
I wasn’t ever going to get to her
place. By now she was probably
in mourning for me and might
even have the Sanitation Staff
searching for my remains.

As I made the chico, he asked
me questions. My name first, and
then, ‘What do you do for a liv-
ing?”

I thought fast. “I’m an ore-sled
dispatcher,” I said. That was a
lie, of course, but I’d heard enough

188

GALAXY

about ore-sled dispatching from
Linda to be able to maintain the
fiction should he question me
further about it.

Actually, I was a gymnast in-
structor. The subjects I taught in-
cluded wrestling, judo and karati
— talents I would prefer to dis-
close to him in my own fashion,
when the time came.

He was quiet for a moment.
“What about radiation level on
the ore-sleds?”

I had no idea what he was
talking about, and admitted as
much.

‘When they come back,” he
said. “How much radiation do
they pick up? Don’t you people
ever test them?”

“Of course not,” I told him. I
was on secure ground now, with
Linda’s information to guide me.
“All radiation is cleared from the
sleds and their cargo before
they’re brought into the build-
ing.”

“I know that,” he said impa-
tiently. “But don’t you ever check
them before de-radiating them?”

“No. Why should we?”

“To find out how far the radia-
tion level outside has dropped.”

“For what? Who cares about
that?”

He frowned bitterly. “The same
answer,” he muttered, more to
himself than to me. “The same
answer every time. You people
have crawled into your, caves and

you’re ready to stay in them
forever.”

I looked around at my apart-
ment. “Rather a well-appointed
cave,” I told him.

“But a cave nevertheless.” He
leaned toward me, his eyes gleam-
ing with a fanatical flame. “Don’t
you ever wish to get Outside?”
Incredible! I nearly poured
boiling water all over myself.
“Outside? Of course not!”

“The same thing,” he grumbled,
“over and over again. Always the
same stupidity. Listen, you! Do
you realize how long it took man
to get out of the caves? The long
slow painful creep of progress,
for millenia, before he ever made
that first step from the cave?”
“I have no idea,” I told him.
“I’ll tell you this,” he said bel-
ligerently. “A lot longer than it
took for him to turn around and
go right back into the cave again.”
He started pacing the floor, wav-
ing the gun around in an agitated
fashion as he talked. “Is this the
natural life of man? It is not. Is
this even a desirable life for man?
It is definitely not.” He spun back
to face me, pointing the gun at
me again, but this time he pointed
it as though it were a finger, not
a gun. “Listen, you,” he snapped.
“Man was progressing. For all his
stupidities and excesses, he was
growing up. His dreams were get-
ting bigger and grander and better
all the time. He was planning to

THE SPY IN THE ELEVATOR

189

tackle space! The moon first, and
then the planets, and finally the
stars. The whole universe was out
there, waiting to be plucked like
an apple from a tank. And Man
was reaching out for it.” He
glared as though daring me to
doubt it.

T DECIDED that this man was
-■-doubly dangerous. Not only
was he a spy, he was also a
lunatic. So I had two reasons for
humoring him. I nodded politely.

“So what happened?” he de-
manded, and immediately an-
swered himself. “I’ll tell you what
happened! Just as he was about
to make that first giant step,
Man got a hotfoot. That’s all it
was, just a little hotfoot. So what
did Man do? I’ll tell you what he
did. He turned around and he ran
all the way back to the cave he
started from, his tail between his
legs. That’s what he did!”

To say that all of this was in-
comprehensible would be an ex-
treme understatement. I fulfilled
my obligation to this insane dia-
logue by saying, “Here’s your
coffee.”

“Put it on the table,” he said,
switching instantly from raving
maniac to watchful spy.

I put it on the table. He drank
deep, then carried the cup across
the room and sat down in my
favorite chair. He studied me nar-
rowly, and suddenly said, “What

did they tell you I was? A spy?”

“Of course,” I said.

He grinned bitterly, with one
side of his mouth. “Of course.
The damn fools! Spy! What do
you suppose I’m going to spy
on?”

He asked the question so vio-
lently and urgently that I knew I
had to answer quickly and well,
or the, maniac would return. “I —
I wouldn’t know, exactly,” I stam-
mered. “Military equipment, I
suppose.”

“Military equipment? What
military equipment? Your Army
is supplied with uniforms, whistles
and hand guns, and that’s about
it.”

“The defenses — ” I started.

“The defenses,” he interrupted
me, “are non-existent. If you mean
the rocket launchers on the roof,
they’re rusted through with age.
And what other defenses are
there? None.”

“If you say so,” I replied stiffly.
The Army claimed that we had
adequate defense equipment. I
chose to believe the Army over
an enemy spy.

“Your people send out spies,
too, don’t they?” he demanded.

“Well, of course.”

“And what are they supposed
to spy on?”

“Well — ” It was such a point-
less question, it seemed silly to
even answer it. “They’re supposed
to look for indications of an

190

GALAXY

attack by one of the other proj-
ects.”

“And do they find any indica-
tions, ever?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” I told
him frostily. “That would be clas-
sified information.”

“You bet it would,” he said,
with malicious glee. “All right, if
that’s what your spies are doing,
and if I’m a spy, then it follows
that I’m doing the same thing,
right?”

“I don’t follow you,” I ad-
mitted.

“If I’m a spy,” he said impa-
tiently, “then I’m supposed to look
for indications of an attack by
you people on my Project.”

I shrugged. “If that’s your job,”
I said, “then that’s your job.”

He got suddenly red-faced, and
jumped to his feet. “That’s not
my job, you blatant idiot!” he
shouted. “I’m not a spy! If I were
a spy, then that would be my
job!”

r ¥^HE maniac had returned, in
full force. “All right,” I said
hastily. “All right, whatever you
say.”

He glowered at me a moment
longer, then shouted, “Bah!” and
dropped back into the chair.

He breathed rather heavily for
a while, glaring at the floor, then
looked at me again. “All right,
listen. What if I were to tell you
that I had found indications that

you people were planning to
attack my Project?”

I stared at him. “That’s impos-
sible!” I cried. “We aren’t plan-
ning to attack anybody! We just
want to be left in peace!”

“How do I know that?” he de-
manded.

“It’s the truth! What would we
want to attack anybody for?”
“Ah hah!” He sat forward,
tensed, pointing the gun at me
like a finger again. “Now, then,”
he said. “If you know it doesn’t
make any sense for this Project
to attack any other project, then
why in the world should you
think they might see some ad-
vantage in attacking you?”

I shook my head, dumb-
founded. “I can’t answer a ques-
tion like that,” I said. “How do I
know what they’re thinking?”
“They’re human beings, aren’t
they?” he cried. “Like you? Like
me? Like all the other people in
this mausoleum?”

“Now, wait a minute — ”

“No!” he shouted. “You wait a
minute! I want to tell you some-
thing. You think I’m a spy. That
blundering Army of yours thinks
I’m a spy. That fathead who
turned me in thinks I’m a spy.
But I’m not a spy, and I’m going
to tell you what I am.”

I waited, looking as attentive
as possible.

“I come,” he said, “from a Proj-
ect about eighty miles north of

THE SPY IN THE ELEVATOR

191

here. I came here by foot, with-
out any sort of radiation shield at
all to protect me.”

The maniac was back. I didn’t
say a word. I didn’t want to set
off the violence that was so ob-
viously in this lunatic.

“The radiation level,” he went
on, “is way down. It’s practically
as low as it was before the Atom
War. I don’t know how long it’s
been that low, but I would guess
about ten years, at the very
least.” He leaned forward again,
urgent and serious. “The world is
safe out there now. Man can come
back out of the cave again. He
can start building the dreams
again. And this time he can build
better, because he has the hor-
rible example of the recent past
to guide him away from the pit-
falls. There’s no need any longer
for the Projects.”

And that was like saying there’s
no need any longer for stomachs,
but I didn’t say so. I didn’t say
anything at all.

“I’m a trained atomic engineer,”
he went on. “In my project, I
worked on the reactor. Theoreti-
cally, I believed that there was a
chance the radiation Outside was
lessening by now, though we had
no idea exactly how much radia-
tion had been released by the
Atom War. But I wanted to test
the theory, and the Commission
wouldn’t let me. They claimed
public safety, but I knew better.

If the Outside were safe and the
Projects were no longer needed,
then the Commission was out of
a job, and they knew it.

66%V/ELL, I went ahead with
the test anyway, and I
was caught at it. For my punish-
ment, I was banned from the Proj-
ect. They kicked me out, tell-
ing me if I thought it was safe
Outside I could live Outside. And
if it really was safe, I could come
back and tell them. Except that
they also made it clear that I
would be shot if I tried to get
back in, because I would be car-
rying deadly radiation.”

He smiled bitterly. “They had
it all their own way,” he said.
“But it is safe out there, I’m living
proof of it. I lived Outside for
five months. And gradually I
realized I had to tell others. I
had to spread the word that Man
could have his world back. I
didn’t dare try to get back into
my own Project; I would have
been recognized and shot before
I could say a word. So I came
here.”

He paused to finish the cup of
chico that I should have had
with lunch. “I knew better,” he
continued, “than to simply walk
into the building and announce
that I came from Outside. Man
has an instinctive distrust for
strangers anyway; the Projects
only intensify it. Once again, I

192

GALAXY

would have been shot. So I’ve
been working in a more devious
way. I snuck into the Project —
not a difficult thing for a man
with no metal on his person, no
radiation shield cocooning him —
and for the last two months I’ve
been wandering around the build-
ing, talking with people. I strike
up a conversation. I try to plant
a few seeds of doubt about the
deadliness of Outside, and I hope
that at least a few of the people
I talk to will begin to wonder, as
I once did.”

Two months! This spy, by his
own admission, had been in the
Project two months before being
detected. I’d never heard of such
a thing, and I hoped I’d never
hear of such a thing again.

“Things worked out pretty
well,” he said, “until today. I said
something wrong — I’m still not
sure what — and the man I was
talking to hollered for Army,
shouted I was a spy.” He pounded
the chair arm. “But I’m not a
spy! And it’s the truth, Outside is
safe!” He glared suddenly at the
window. “Why’ve you got that
drape up there?”

“The window broke down,” I
explained. “It’s stuck at trans-
parent.”

“Transparent? Fine!” He got
up from the chair, strode across
the room, and ripped the drape
down from the window.

I cowered away from the sun-

glare, turning my back to the
window.

“Come over here!” he shouted.
When I didn’t move, he snarled,
“Get up and come over here, or
I swear I’ll shoot!”

And he would have, it was
plain in his voice. I got to my feet,
hesitant, and walked trembling
to the window, squinting against
the glare.

“Look out there,” he ordered.
“Look!”

I looked.

IV

HPERROR. Horror. Dizziness
and nausea.

Far and away and far, nothing
and nothing. Only the glare, and
the high blue, and the far far
horizon, and the broken gray slag
stretching out, way down below.

“Do you see?” he demanded.
“Look down there! We’re so high
up, it’s hard to see, but look for
it. Do you see it? Do you see the
green? Do you know what that
means? There are green things
growing again Outside! Not much
yet. It’s only just started back,
but it’s begun. The radiation is
down. Plants are growing again.”

The power of suggestion. And,
of course, the heightened sensitivi-
ty caused by the double threat
of a man beside me carrying a
gun that yawning aching expanse
of nothing beyond the window.

THE SPY IN THE ELEVATOR

193

I nearly fancied that I did see
faint specks of green.

“Do you see it?” he asked me.

“Wait,” I said. I leaned closer
to the window, though every
nerve in me wanted to leap the
other way. “Yes!” I said. “Yes, I
see it! Green!”

He sighed, a long painful sigh
of thanksgiving. “Then now you
know,” he said. “I’ve been telling
you the truth. It is safe Outside.”

And my lie worked. For the
first time, his guard was com-
pletely down.

I moved like a whirlwind. I
leaped, and twisted his arm in a
hard hammerlock, which caused
him to cry out and drop the gun.
That was wrestling. Then I turned
and twisted and dipped, causing
him to fly over my head and
crash to the floor. That was judo.
Then I jabbed one rigid forefinger
against a certain spot on the side
of his neck, causing the blood in
his veins to forever stop its mo-
tion. That was karati.

VW / KLL, by the time the Army
* * men had finished question-
ing me, it was three o’clock in
the afternoon, and I was five
hours late. The Army men cor-

roborated my belief that the man
had been a spy, who had appar-
ently lost his mind when cor-
nered in the elevator. Outside was
still dangerous, of course, they
assured me of that. And he’d
been lying about having been here
two months. He’d been in the
Project less than two days. Not
only that, the Army men told me
they’d found the radiation-proof
car he’d driven, and in which he
had hoped to drive back to his
own Project once he’d discovered
all our defenses.

Despite the fact that I had the
most legitimate excuse for tardi-
ness under the roof, Linda refused
to forgive me for not making our
ten o’clock meeting. When I asked
her to marry me she refused, at
length and descriptively.

But I was surprised and re-
lieved to discover how rapidly I
got over my heartbreak. This was
aided by the fact that once the
news of my exploit spread, there
were any number of girls more
than anxious to get to know me
better, including the well-cleav-
aged young lady from the Trans-
it Staff. After all, I was a hero.

They even gave me a medal.

— DONALD E. WESTLAKE

194

GALAXY

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